


Sidelines

by esama



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, BAMF Sawada Tsunayoshi, Gen, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-05
Updated: 2016-01-19
Packaged: 2018-05-11 23:16:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 53,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5645389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esama/pseuds/esama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world ended and Tsuna survived.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Proofread by Darlene, many thanks.

Tsuna crouched behind a pile of rubble, the hood of his too large coat pulled low over his face, almost hiding the shine of his eyes.

There was a group of men standing around not far from him – three of them, all dressed in Millefiore uniforms. Except… not quite. They weren't quite right. White coats with shoulder guards, belts here and there – the likeness was good, but they lacked the craftsmanship of the actual Millefiore uniforms.

Bandits, probably, pretending to be Millefiore. They had a lot of guts, Tsuna had to hand them that, though he could see why they would. At a distance the likeness was striking and probably was enough to ward away most potential threats.

Tsuna wasn't much of a threat to anyone, though.

"Fuck, it's getting cold," one of the men pretending to be something even worse than they actually were muttered, rubbing his bare hands together. "We should head back, there ain't anything here."

"Then why are they still doing passes here?" another man muttered, his hands tucked in his pockets, chin tucked into the high collar of his white coat, trying to ward off the chilly wind. "There must be something here, or they wouldn't bother with this place anymore. Probably a lot of people, at least."

"And they're worth freezing our balls off, that it?" the first muttered and glanced at the third. "Anything?"

The third man was fiddling with a busted up walkie-talkie, trying to get a signal. "Does it sound like I'm getting anything?" he muttered, twiddling a dial. "Fucking – I think the cold's draining the battery or some shit. Or maybe the buildings are interfering with the signal."

"Well, let's get higher up," the first man said and glanced around. "There," he nodded. "That looks mostly intact – we should be able to get on the roof."

He was looking towards Namimori Middle School – which incidentally wasn't all that intact. It was missing most of its side, and Tsuna knew for a fact that the back of the school had completely crumbled. But the fake-Millefiore were right bout one thing – you could get on the roof. If you were dumb enough.

"Come on," the bandit with his hands in his pockets muttered. "Let's get out the fucking wind."

Tsuna waited, still as a stone, as the bandits sauntered towards the school in a weird mixture of outward confidence and obviously shaking knees. Apparently their fake uniforms weren't too warm, but then they probably couldn't add too many layers – it would've ruined the aesthetic.

Letting himself be amused by that for a moment, Tsuna waited until they were out of sight and then left his shelter behind the pile of rubble. As quiet as he could be, he crossed over the street and into the shade of another building, ducking down low under the nearest cover – a trash container. So hidden, he continued on, leaving behind the neighbourhood he'd once considered safe and heading further into the city.

Namimori was mostly in ruins, the whole of it. There wasn't a single building left that hadn't lost bits and pieces – most of the skyscrapers in the city centre had crumbled down long ago, unable to support their own weight. What had once been a bustling city with about a quarter of a million people now housed a population of a handful of scavengers that tried their best to avoid each other – and the occasional group of bandits who came in and left when they found the legendary ruins utterly devoid of anything usable.

Legendary. What a laugh.

His head ducked low, Tsuna stopped at a corner of a building to check the area. Tucking his hood lower by habit, he narrowed his eyes and let the weird sixth sense he'd developed guide his vision. It caught a turned over container of old newspapers, the chilly wind rustling at the stained pages. It caught a few dry leaves still clinging to the crooked branches of a long dead decorative tree. It caught a rat at the further end of the street that peeked out of a hole in a wall of what had once been a quaint little café – it was there and gone in an instant.

Tsuna blinked and once he was sure there was no one in sight, he left the shelter of the alleyway and headed for the café. A rat was usually a good sign, after all. Where there were rats, there was usually food.

The café had been looted long ago – indeed, it wasn't the first time Tsuna himself had checked it. The place was polished clean now – even the furniture was gone. There'd been little wooden tables and chairs there once, and the counter had been mostly wooden too. Judging by the looks of the broken shards, all of them had long since been chopped up for firewood.

Which probably meant someone had lived in the café sometime between now and when Tsuna had checked it the last time.

Taking cover in the shadows nearest to the entrance, Tsuna waited guardedly for a moment, watching and listening. He could hear the skittering of the rat, and the rustling of the newspapers outside, but nothing else. The café was, for now, abandoned.

He headed deeper in, sneaking past the remains of the counter and through the doorway to the back room. It had been rearranged – the metal tables where someone had once upon a time cooked a variety of pastries had been arranged into a barricade, protecting the heavy door in the back – the one leading to the freezer. Tsuna made his way towards it, jumping nimbly over the makeshift barricade and then pulling heavy freezer very slowly open.

There were two corpses inside – both in various stages of decomposition. And of being eaten.

Well. There went any plans he had of trying to catch the rats here.

Tucking his scarf up to shield his nose from the smell of the dead bodies, Tsuna began to check the little hideout. It was easy to see why the dead people had taken shelter in the freezer – it was small and, being a freezer, well isolated. There was a makeshift oven in the corner that had probably been enough to keep the people warm with very little fuel. There was still some fuel left in the oven.

Judging by the makeshift bandages scattered around, it wasn't the cold that had killed them. One or both had gotten injured – and it didn't even matter how badly. Just a small nick was enough these days.

Tsuna ignored the twinge of grief over them, and instead checked what they had stored in the couple of stained backpacks just beside their makeshift bed.  There were some clothes, sanitary items, a couple of books, one had a photo album which Tsuna very resolutely didn't even glance at, some pens and paper… One of them had kept a diary. Tsuna didn't look at that either.

He took the mostly empty bottle of bleach and the heavily diluted hand soap, pushing both into his own backpack. Then, at the very bottom of one of the packs, he hit a jackpot. A couple of cans of fruit and a very carefully packed sack of rice.

"Thank you," Tsuna murmured to the bodies as he quickly took the food. "I'm sorry. Rest in peace."

After checking the little hideout for anything else useful, Tsuna retreated. He was tempted to close the door to the freezer and preserve the bodies from the rats that had obviously been helping themselves to them, but… well. Rats needed to eat too. And he wasn't really in a position to critique what they ate, considering how much of his own diet was made of them, these days.

So he left the freezer instead, crouching down again to keep out of view of the windows. Then, sneaking to the back door, he froze and listened.

Gunshots in the distance – three powerful shots fired at a steady pace, one after another. Seemed like the bandits had gotten on top of Namimori Middle School. Poor bastards.

Ducking his head low, Tsuna continued on. The night was young and he had a lot more to scavenge before returning home.

 

* * *

 

Tsuna snuck in through the window, shimmying in with practiced ease, his sneaker clad feet landing soundlessly on top of the washing machine that hadn't worked in years. Quickly he turned around and reached out through the window to pull a trash container to cover the window, hiding it from outside view. Even then, in the shelter of his current hideout, he didn't relax instantly, stopping instead to listen. Even though he hadn't seen any signs of intruders, you never knew.

It was silent, and with a shudder Tsuna let himself exhale and drop down to the floor.

"I'm home," he murmured, and made his way out of the washing room and into the main basement – the only thing left of the house. What had once been a two story building had long since been razed to the ground – now only a pile of rubble remained on top. How the basement had survived, Tsuna wasn't sure, but it made a good hideout. One of the best he had had in a while.

With a sigh, Tsuna dropped to sit on the mould stained couch in the middle of the basement, running a hand over his face. It had been a good night, given the value of _good_ these days. Food, soap, bleach – he'd even found an interesting looking book on his way back. He'd survive to scavenge another day, judging by the looks of it.

"I did pretty good today, mom," he said, glancing towards the makeshift shrine in the corner. "I saw some people from out of town today too – so I guess the world's still trucking on. Some thugs, dressed up as Millefiore. It was kind of funny. They decided to go to Namimori Middle School to try and get a signal on their walkie-talkie. Obviously out of town, yeah?"

No one who was actually from Namimori was stupid enough to do something like that. No one knew why, but Namimori Middle School was _the_ spot for snipers. For the last several years, no one who went there came out alive.

Not that there were that many original Namimori citizens left. He hadn't seen anyone _decent_ in weeks.

Shaking his head, Tsuna shrugged his backpack off and then checked his loot. "I indulged a bit," he admitted, taking the book out. It was some fantasy novel judging by the cover – it had a guy with a sword on it. "It's nothing useful, but I had space in my backpack so…" he shrugged and set it aside. Later, once he was done reading it, it would make good fire starter.

Tsuna stared at the book for a while and then sighed, dropping it in his lap and leaning his head back and against the backrest of the couch. He should clean up now that he had soap, maybe even wash some of his clothes. And he should get the fire going before it got too cold. And he should maybe eat something now that he had a bit of extra.

"I found fruit, mom," he said with a slight smile. "Just a can of fruit cocktail – who knows how bad it is by now, but… its fruit. Man, I can't wait to have a taste…"

He didn't, though. Instead he curled up on the couch, tucking his too large coat tighter around himself. Shuddering slightly, he hugged himself and stared at the shrine.

How long it had been since he'd buried her?

"Good night, mom," Tsuna murmured and closed his eyes.

 

* * *

 

 

He woke up instantly, eyes opening in a flash of orange. There was a rhythmic thrumming in the air, distant and faint and easily recognizable. A helicopter, maybe half a mile out, approaching fast.

Millefiore.

Tsuna lay still for a moment, listening. Then he rolled up in one smooth motion, picking up his backpack and shoving everything he could quickly get his hands on into it. What he'd found yesterday and what he'd already owned – the food he had stored, some of his extra clothes, the other essentials. Finally, he quickly went to the shrine and after a quick prayer, he grabbed the only picture he had left of Sawada Nana, and tucked it into his inner pocket. Then, without pausing, he headed for the laundry room, and jumped up on the washing machine.

He was already a few blocks away from his hideout when the bombing started. Why the Millefiore were still bombing Namimori no one knew, but those who still lived there knew the drill. Whenever a helicopter came, the bombing started.

Namimori was the first city the Millefiore had destroyed – and still no one knew why. That was why it was legendary these days – that was where it had started. Or who knew – Tsuna figured the Millefiore take over had probably stared somewhere else, in politics and shady dealings that had given the Millefiore all their power and resources and everything else they had. But the utter disaster, the apocalyptic destruction? That had started with the bombing of Namimori. And on and off they were still bombing Namimori to this day.

Tsuna didn't stop to see what they were bombing today – it didn't matter. He expected the worst, he always did. That was why he was alive today.

Somehow, his hideout would always get hit in these bombings. It didn't matter where he hid at that time – it would always be hit. If he didn't know any better, he would've said that they were actually targeting him, somehow.

The noise of the approaching helicopter got louder until it was thundering against the shells of mostly crumbled buildings and making the very ground tremble. The first explosion followed not much after. Tsuna glanced towards it, eyes gleaming. About five, six blocks away and aimed right at the buildings. He needed to hurry.

The next explosion was closer, four blocks. After that it was close enough that he could hear the whistle of the missile as it was fired just before it impacted and the third explosion shook the ground. It was close, it was worryingly close – if it hadn't taken out his hideout, then the next one would.

Tsuna ran, trying to get out of the helicopter's path by taking a sharp left, taking cover as much as he possibly could – but right now, hiding wasn't as important as getting away. These helicopters usually only carried six missiles – sometimes they fired machine guns or whatever those were called, but usually it was just the bombing. Three missiles down meant three left and they were so close – if he wasn't careful, he would get caught in it.

He'd been close once when one of the missiles had hit. He had the scars to prove it – and he wasn't looking to get any more.

The fourth shell hit, and the street echoed with the impact. Tsuna grit his teeth, glancing over his shoulder – the damn helicopter wasn't flying in a straight line like usual. It had an arching route. Like he did.

It was as if it was actually _following him_.

Then the guns at the sides began to fire. The bullets impacted the street and with wide eyes Tsuna dove for cover just as the trail of bullets ran right past him, terrifyingly close. His heat beating hard, Tsuna stared at the trail of bullet holes in the street and then ducked lower as the guns made another pass – this time hitting the piece of wall he was hiding behind. The wall, what was left of it, trembled with each impact.

They were aiming at him. Had the people in the helicopter spotted him running and decided to make a game of him – or…

They couldn't be here just to kill _him_?

There was a whistle in air and Tsuna launched off at a dead run without a single second thought. The shell hit the wall he'd been hiding behind and the shock wave knocked him off his feet a split a second later, the heat of the explosion washing over him. Momentarily stunned, Tsuna stared at the ground. Shooting a random scavenger with a machine gun was one thing – but aiming a missile at them?

The helicopter hovered over him and Tsuna looked over his shoulder, eyes wide and blazing. They could see everything – the pilot and the co-pilot with their helmets and goggles and headphones. The gunner, waiving the machine gun on the side straight at him. He could see cameras – one inside the cockpit and another on the bottom of the helicopter. They were filming him.

Tsuna's eyes burned as he watched the co-pilot touch the microphone hovering over his mouth. "We have him. Yes sir, his eyes glow, just like you said," he could read on the pilot's lips. "Yes sir. Fire!"

And suddenly, there was silence. Tsuna stared up at the helicopter in incomprehension and it took him a moment to realise that the rotor blades were frozen, as was the helicopter, as were the people in the Millefiore uniforms inside. The heat of the explosion was gone, as was the noise of the destruction – and when Tsuna risked looking away from the helicopter, he saw that the flames were frozen in time.

Time had stopped.

So… this was what it was like when you died?

"You're not dead, Tsunayoshi Sawada," a voice said behind him, and turning to look Tsuna saw something that made just about as much sense as the suddenly frozen time. There was a girl in white floating in the air, with an enormous hat and a small tattoo on her cheek. She was smiling at him.

"Byakuran could feel the end coming," she said. "He knew we were about to undo what he's done. That's why he sent them to kill you. Even if you're not a threat here, it was the only revenge he could take."

"What?" Tsuna asked, pushing himself up slowly, staring. "What is this? Who's Byakuran?"

She smiled, the expression a little pained. "Reality has gone a bit weird," she said. "Byakuran is the leader of Millefiore, the man who is responsible for all of this. He has damaged many futures. This," she motioned around them, "is wrong in ways you probably don't understand. This shouldn't have happened. It shouldn't have been possible. It's being undone now."

"I don't –" Tsuna murmured, glancing up at the frozen helicopter. "I _don't_ understand," he admitted with a frown.

The girl sighed. "That's alright," she said and smiled. "Just know that I'm thankful to you, we all are. Even if it wasn't you who helped us, it was a you, another you – and all of you are special in your own way."

Tsuna just stared at her, uncomprehending, and shook his head in denial. He was just another scavenger trying to get by, and this, whatever it was, was just about the most special thing that had ever happened to him.

The girl chuckled. "You are," she said and looked up, taking a deep breath and then exhaling slowly. "I'm not here, not really – I'm only here to see that time is set back properly, that these futures fade away as they should," she said. "But there's a price someone has to bare."

"I… I'm not…" Tsuna started and then stopped. Maybe this was all a hallucination or maybe he'd finally lost his mind – it didn't matter. It was a strange hope, but he grasped it with both hands. "You mean all this destruction, don't you? You will undo what Millefiore did to the world?"

"It is already being undone," the girl nodded, looking at him with a sad smile. "But there is a danger something like this might happen again, and to undo the future, the past has to be changed. Somebody has to bare the burden of this future, even here in this world where things went so very differently."

"And for some reason that someone is me," Tsuna said slowly.

"You are… you," the girl said like that meant something.

Tsuna swallowed. "If you can undo this future then do it," he said. "I don't care what I have to bare, just…" he shuddered. It wasn't something he'd allowed himself to think or dream about in a long time. "I want the peaceful past back."

The girl's smile widened at that. "You really are a very gentle Sky," she said and the world faded away.


	2. Chapter 2

It was the light switch that convinced Tsuna that he was not imagining it. It wasn't just that it worked – it was the small details of it. The faded, half scraped-off remains of a sticker he stuck on it when he was five. The scratch underneath from when he tried to get the sticker off with a pair of scissors and missed, scraping the wall instead. The weight of it, the hint of effort it took to flick it on, the way the light flickered on and off a couple of times…

There were noises coming from downstairs that echoed into Tsuna's half-forgotten memories as he stood there, hand on the light switch, listening closely. The clatter of metal on metal – a frying pan on the stove, maybe, or a pot? There was a smell in the air that wasn't mould or burning wood, but food – and not just food but the kind of food he could barely remember. He could smell… toast. Was it toast?

"Tsuna, honey!" a voice that made tears rise into Tsuna's eyes called from below. "Time to wake up!"

Tsuna swallowed and hesitated for a moment before stepping out of the room – the painfully familiar room he could remember burning, years and years ago. Quiet as a mouse he took the stairs down and then peeked into the kitchen – and there she was, his mother, standing by the stove with an apron on, a spatula in hand, her attention on the frying pan. She looked just like he remembered her, only brighter, younger, less worn down. Somehow there was more colour on her, from the pink shirt she wore, the blue jeans she had on.

She was making a bento box. His bento box, Tsuna realised somehow distantly.

"Good morning, honey. There's toast for you," Nana said, glancing at him with a smile. She stopped to stare at him. "Tsuna? Tsuna, dear, what's wrong?"

He was crying, he thought – that was the look she got when he cried. "Nothing," he said automatically and wiped a hand over his eyes – except his voice shook and he doesn't sound at all convincing. "I'm good, nothing's wrong."

"Oh, honey, did you have a nightmare?" Nana asked, cooing softly in the way she used to, back when comfort was such an easy thing to give and receive and _believe_. "Come here Tsuna honey, let mamma hug you."

Hug her. Tsuna couldn't have declined that even if his life depended on his. His knees shaking, he walked up to her, slow and hesitant at first and then all but running until he collided against her chest, one of her arms coming around him automatically. "Ah, there, there, sweetheart," she murmured, kissing his hair. "It's okay. It was just a dream."

She was so big, so tall – no, he must be shorter. And smaller too. Her arm felt heavy and secure around his shoulders and it almost felt like she was strong enough to keep it all at bay. Like she could fold him in her arms and hide him from the entire world. She rubbed her hand down his back and it felt warm. She smelled like home and safety. She felt warm.

She was _alive_.

"Mom," Tsuna muttered and squeezed his eyes shut. "Mom… _Mom._ "

"There now, Tsuna honey," she cooed in his ear and rocked him slightly. "You should've come to mamma if you had a bad dream. There, there, honey, there, there."

It took Tsuna a long time – too long – to get a hold of himself, and he berated himself for it silently. He couldn't let himself go like this, couldn't let his guard down like this – what if someone came across him like this and –

Nana laid a palm over his cheek and brushed a tear away with her thumb. "Alright, honey?" she asked gently and smiled at his shuddering nod. "Good. Go wash your face sweetheart and come have breakfast."

Letting go of her was almost harder than anything, but he managed to do it. Somehow he even managed to let her out of his sight and walk to the bathroom. There he stood for a moment, shaking and shivering, staring at his strangely small hands and then, at the sight of the mirror, at his face. It was different. Completely different.

Not that he'd seen himself in a long time. Not really. He'd had a hand mirror – it used to be his mother's make up mirror, before he'd lost her. After that he'd used it for shaving whenever he found a blade for it. That hadn't been in a while though, and the lack of beard alone was strange. Never mind the face under it.

His cheeks here were smooth and ever so slightly round. The lines and scars he knew to be there… weren't.

There were tear stains on his face though, so with shaking hands, Tsuna turned on the faucet and then had a small freak out over the running hot water.

 

* * *

 

There was time, not much after his mother had died, that Tsuna had spent a lot of time just… daydreaming about the past. About how much better it had been, how much easier it was back then and how, if only time could go back, he'd appreciate it so much more. Things like heating indoors and clean linen and working plumbing. Things like grocery stores and the constant, never ending surplus of not just food, but _everything_. The simple things, like streets you could safely walk on, and the fact that you could walk past people without fearing that they might take out a knife and stab you.

The past was a safe haven glowing golden where everything was better and easy and nothing was out to get you. Dreaming and longing for it had kept him distracted for a while. It had come back to bite him on the ass later, when it had distracted him from things he needed to be on his guard about, but still. They had been nice dreams.

One would think that having those dreams come true would make things… better.

Instead he had freak outs over not just running water, but things like working telephones, a police car driving past him in the street – people in the street, cars in the street… For heavens' sake, a _bicycle_ almost made him duck into bushes because he'd not heard a bicycle bell in years and what if it was some sort of distraction, like that time when some bandits had played music in the city centre and then shot everyone who was dumb enough to go to listen?

And then there was school.

He hadn't really remembered school. Not as anything other than as place of relative safety in the past and absolute danger in the present – or the future. To him, Namimori Middle School was a place where you went to get shot in the head, a place surrounded by bombed out buildings and littered with corpses no one dared to go out and clear away. It wasn't a place full of people, full of _kids_ laughing and running about.

"Pfft, look at No-Good Tsuna," someone muttered while Tsuna stood by the gates, trying to convince himself to go inside. "What's he freaking out about?"

"Did someone beat him up yesterday or something?"

Tsuna was freaking out about the unbroken windows and the clean yard, the flower arrangements by the side. He was freaking out about two boys having a mock fist fight not far from him. He was freaking out about a group of girls walking with their legs bared right up to their thighs. Weren't they freezing? Weren't they scared of being scraped or cut?

"Move it, No-Good -!"

Tsuna moved before the hand could make contact to shove at him. He ducked and twisted, grabbing the hand and pulling while bending his knees and ducking down. The guy he had by the wrist over balanced and Tsuna automatically head-butted him in the chin, sending his head violently back. He could hear the clatter of teeth and the muffled shriek of someone who just bit through their tongue, and he took advantage of it instinctively, punching the guy hard and fast in the bare throat with a closed fist. The assailant choked and stumbled back, struggling for breath that was hard to get with a near-crushed wind pipe.

The attacker thus incapacitated, Tsuna turned and fled – not to the school, because the school was where you died. He ran to the opposite direction, to the shelter of the nearest alleyway, hurriedly putting as much distance between him and the bandit, hoping that they didn't have a gun, hoping that they didn't have _friends_ –

Tsuna was four blocks away before a car honking at him startled him back to the present.

By that time the fact that No-Good Tsuna had beaten up Kaneda at the school gates and ran off had already gone around Namimori Middle School.

 

* * *

 

"What?" Hibari asked quietly.

"Bit his tongue clean through – they say he has to be taken to the hospital because it won't stop bleeding," Kusakabe said. "Apparently it was No-Good Tsuna that did it, though I dunno how –"

"Who?"

"Ah – Sawada Tsunayoshi, from class 2-A," Kusakabe explains. "He's a nobody, one of the worst students in the school. Apparently he did something to Kaneda at the school gates that resulted in Kaneda almost biting his own tongue off. Also, I think Sawada punched him in the throat or something – the guy had some trouble breathing."

Hibari narrowed his eyes and got to his feet, walking to the filing cabinets at the side of the room. There he selected the drawer for 2-A and from it he picked up the folder they had on Sawada Tsunayoshi. It was a very thin folder.

Sawada Tsunayoshi was a shrimp of a kid, barely a meter and a half in height and underweight judging by the looks of it. A first year student, he was doing poorly in all of his classes and so far hadn't been causing any trouble for anybody – aside from a couple of report cards and his student id, they had nothing about him in file. He'd never done anything particularly interesting, wasn't part of any clubs and didn't take part in any activities.

A mousy little nobody causing a disturbance, and so early into the school day. "Where's Sawada?" Hibari asked dangerously as he shoved the folder back into the cabinet.

Kusakabe shrugged. "Ran off. From what I hear he headed towards Third Street."

"Hm. Keep me posted on Kaneda. I'll go find Sawada," Hibari said and headed off.

He'd never as much as heard of Sawada Tsunayoshi before, and there wasn't anything more annoying than someone he didn't know to keep his eye on causing disruptions. And it definitely wasn't something he could tolerate, so early into the semester. And seeing that Sawada was the first undisciplined individual of the semester…

Hibari would make an example of him.

So, ignoring the look the teacher by the gates gave him, Hibari set out to hunt Sawada down. Sawada had headed towards Third Street, he thought and smiled grimly. Running towards the nearest cover like a terrified mouse seeking shelter. _Herbivores_ , so predictable.

He stalked in a straight line, glancing down every crossing on his way before selecting the obvious route – the easiest to travel and the one with the most shelter, the one a prey animal would take. And, predictably enough, it paid off.

Hibari found Sawada after barely a hunt. The herbivore was crouched in the shadows of an air conditioning unit connected to the building at his back, taking shelter behind its bulk. Judging by the looks of it, he was having a minor panic attack, biting his lip and staring at nothing as he crouched there like a wounded animal.

Probably hadn't meant to attack Kaneda as ferociously as he had. Hibari knew the type. It was the exact same look a kid in Hibari's class had had the previous year – a bullied weakling who'd started taking defence lessons and never realised how bad your usual common thug was at actual hand to hand combat. A prey animal that had discovered its defence mechanisms and didn't quite realise how effective they were – and didn't know how to handle the blood they drew.

Better to teach Sawada a lesson, before he fooled himself into thinking he was a carnivore.

Hibari gripped his tonfa and approached Sawada with every intention of making the first strike memorable – only, Sawada came alive before he could. His eyes flashed up and the look in them wasn't that of cornered prey but that of something else, something sharper, something cunning. Before Hibari could analyse it further, Sawada was up and moving, his posture crouched and tense and ready for anything.

The face he showed Hibari wasn't that of the mousy creature in his class picture. There was something about his eyes…

Hibari moved to block the exit and Sawada stilled, tense and alert.

"You're absent from school and you've caused a disturbance by fighting with another student," Hibari said, lifting one of his tonfa and getting ready. "Absences without previous notice are against school regulation and fighting will result in disciplinary action."

Sawada didn't answer, though he looked a little confused – which only pissed Hibari off further. Narrowing his eyes, the head of the Disciplinary Committee rushed forward with every intention of enlightening the herbivore on the severity of his crime.

Sawada tensed and his eyes flashed – and as Hibari attacked, he ducked below the first attack and jumped to the side out of the way of the second. As Hibari followed through with another attack, Sawada lifted his arm to catch the tonfa against his arm and then grabbed a hold of it with a white knuckled twist before pulling and trying to catch Hibari with his knee. It was a pitiful attack except for one thing.

It hit, catching Hibari on the side of his hip.

"Oh?" Hibari muttered and went for another attack to get Sawada to release his tonfa – which he did, relinquishing the slight advantage in favour of protecting his face. Then the fight really started.

There was no technique in Sawada's fighting, no skill – nothing but raw survival instinct. He was constantly scanning the area for advantages, looking for openings to exploit for maximum shock effect so he could incapacitate Hibari and make his escape. He tried to run for it several times and each time Hibari blocked him, he got more desperate – and with it, more dangerous.

With each potential tactic closed off, something sharpened in Sawada and Hibari knew without needing it confirmed that this was a herbivore fully willing to go for the kill if he had to – if it saved his life. Like a deer that would run a predator through with its antlers, if given a chance.

Hibari had the strangest feeling he was lucky that Sawada didn't have a knife.

"Enough," he snarled and stepped back – still blocking the exit but holding his arms down, still gripping his tonfa tight but not presenting them in challenge. "We'll return to school, now."

Sawada blinked at that, and there was the confusion again. "School," he repeated dully and then looked down at Hibari's uniform with confusion. Then he looked at his own clothes, at his hands, the knuckles now bloodied from hits they'd given and taken. "Oh, right," he muttered and then looked up, even more confused. "Um. Why'd you attack me when we're… here?"

 Hibari gritted his teeth and he so wanted to hit the herbivore again. "You're missing from school and you attacked a student," he said through his clenched teeth.

"… Oh, wait," Sawada said. "He attacked me – uh," he paused. "No, I guess he didn't," he muttered and then winced. "Damnit, I attacked a _kid_ …"

Hibari snarled in annoyance and stepped forward – and immediately Sawada was on his guard again, ready to fight. So Hibari stopped and instead of grabbing him by the back of his jacket, he aimed a tonfa at him. "Back to school," he grunted and motioned at the alley with his tonfa. "Now."

"Um –"

" _Now_."

Wincing Sawada backed away and with increasing frustration at this strange herbivore, Hibari stepped aside to present an opening for escape. Sawada hesitated only a moment before taking it, keeping well clear from Hibari, all the while keeping a close eye on him. And when Hibari turned to follow, Sawada almost stumbled as his determination to keep the carnivore in his sight nearly send him walking into a lamp post.

"Watch where you're going," Hibari snarled.

"Yeah, yeah," Sawada said, and then just ignored the order entirely.

Funny how someone could be so cautious of something all the while not being _afraid at all_ , Hibari thought with a mixture of amusement and irritation. What an interesting and frustrating little prey animal Sawada was.

 

* * *

 

Tsuna got detention. Apparently the kid he'd… attacked had had to go to the hospital and get stitches for his tongue. He was lucky that he wasn't being suspended or worse, according to the teachers. They weren't too happy about it, and now everyone was staring at him and whispering.

It was horrible and nerve wrecking and all the while the black haired kid was skulking somewhere behind Tsuna, staring at him like he was about to shoot Tsuna in the back. What was his _name_? Tsuna was pretty certain he knew him from before, that he'd known the kid's name, but it had been so long that he'd forgotten just about everyone's name. It started with a Hi, maybe?

He had to wonder how he'd done, when Millefiore had attacked.

"That No-Good Tsuna?" someone muttered to the left of him and Tsuna tensed, getting ready for an attack – but it was just a student, a kid, whispering behind his hand to another kid. He didn't even look like he had weapons "Really? Hard to believe."

"Yeah, but look at Hibari," the other kid muttered, just as weaponless. "Looks ready to kill Tsuna."

Tsuna narrowed his eyes and then looked away. He was surrounded and it was grating against every survival sense to just sit there, defenceless and open for all sorts of attacks.

The peaceful past, he thought and gritted his teeth. This was the peaceful past, not… not that time before. The girl had said that that time was erased. It was no more. It wouldn't happen again.

But still, it was all so strange, and try as he might, Tsuna couldn't shake the feeling that he was about to be attacked. And maybe he was. The Hi-named kid – Hibari? – certainly hadn't wasted any time, and man, had that thrown Tsuna for a loop and then some. For a moment there – well, ever since that moment at the school gates, that was when he'd lost it really – he hadn't really been sure where he was.

Tsuna squeezed his hands into fists and tried to relax and ignore the looks people were shooting at his vulnerable neck.

He'd managed to stay sane all through the horrors of Millefiore's bombings and attacks, and yet here, in this peaceful past, he couldn't stop constantly freaking out. Great.


	3. Chapter 3

Tsuna stared at the rows and rows of cans in something like desperation. There was enough food to keep him fed for a year just… sitting there, on shelves stocked so full that they were practically uniform. Just food as far as the eye could see, and of types he didn't even know existed, types he couldn't have imagined.

He had this terrible urge to fall face first right into the shelves, grab as many cans as he could wrap his arms around, and make a run for it. A part of him was a nervous wreck because this kind of thing, this much food in one place, was bad. It was either a Millefiore storage place or the hide out of some big gang or something like that, and in either case it would be only a matter of time before people would come to guard it or get it or just steal it and he was just standing there and…

And this was the peaceful past, and this much food in a single place wasn't a risk, it wasn't a dangerous treasury to be longed for or wary of. No. It was just a convenience store. Just a shop, stocked with all the efficiency of this time. There'd be no armed guards here to protect it, and it wasn't going to be stolen the moment he stopped looking at it. The peaceful past had surplus. And it was just sitting there. For anyone to take.

Tsuna leaned his head back for a moment and thought morosely back to those long hungry years when this sort of thing would've had him weeping in gratitude. He kind of felt like weeping right there and then. The last time he'd seen this much food was just before his mom had died, when he'd been an idiot and broken into an abandoned Millefiore base trying to find meds and…

Well.

Squaring his shoulders, Tsuna took a breath and then released it slowly and somehow managed to walk away from the enticing richness of the cans and go and find the bread his mother had told him to buy. Except of course then he saw the bread isle and had to stop and hyperventilate a bit.

Because it was just… so much bread.

Shelves _full_ of bread, all of it fresh and none of it moulded through or dried hard. Lined up neat in their clean plastic bags, tagged with dates that were in the future rather than years and years in the past. And beside the bread shelves there were pastries, so many pastries, some of them in their own containers for people to pick and choose from, others in bags or boxes and…

Tsuna might've whimpered a little. He was supposed to buy bread for his mom. He was supposed to pick _one_ bread and take it home – he was supposed to _choose_ from this _hoard_ of food and –

"Sawada?" a female voice asked from nearby and Tsuna froze and had a moment of madness and very nearly grabbed a bread to throw at the speaker. He managed to stop himself in time and only tensed and turned to the speaker. It was a girl in a familiar uniform. "Are you… alright?"

No, no he wasn't. Tsuna glanced at the food and could feel the face he was making and try as he might he couldn't stop it. "Yeah," he said and looked at the girl, trying to remember her name. He'd probably known it, once. "Um. What kind of bread do you like?" he asked hopelessly.

 "Um," she said, looking at him strangely. "Well… I guess I like white bread? I don't really eat it that often, but," she hesitated and pointed. "That one – it's really good with some jam."

Tsuna grabbed the bread she was pointing at. "Thanks," he said gratefully and very determinately did not try to shove the bread under his flimsy little school uniform. "Uh – sorry, I don't… what was your name again?"

Now she looked near stunned. "Oh, um… It's Sasagawa Kyoko?" she said, blinking at him.

"Thanks, Sasagawa," Tsuna said, wincing. He thought he remembered her, a little. He might've been friends with her, or something like that. "Sorry, uh," he hesitated. "It's been a bit of a weird day for me."

"Yeah I heard about that," Sasagawa said hesitantly. "And, um… just call me Kyoko, okay?"

"Right. Kyoko. Sorry."

They stood there for a moment awkwardly, Tsuna almost hugging the bread and she staring at him like she was seeing him for the first time – or like he'd been replaced by some weirdo who didn't know her all of a sudden. "Um. Well, I need to finish shopping, and uh… are you alright?"

Tsuna nodded and then hesitated. "What… kind of jam do you like?" he asked awkwardly.

"Raspberry," Kyoko answered and tilted her head. "Do you want me to show you?"

Tsuna considered it and for a moment all he could think about were rows and rows of cans except this time they were glass jars and - "… Yeah," Tsuna said quietly and shuddered. "Please."

The girl smiled, still looking a little confused, but motioned him to follow, which he awkwardly did. She walked ahead of him, revealing her back to him easy as anything, and Tsuna was first weirdly humbled by that and then he was overcome by strange, furious grief for her. She'd get herself killed like this, by trusting people so easily. And he already hated the people who'd end up taking advantage of her vulnerable kindness.

The peaceful past, Tsuna thought, and looked at the floor instead of counting all the ways she was open for quick and brutal attack.

Kyoko showed him to the isle with almost nothing but jam and Tsuna managed to keep himself from losing it by staring at her hands as she picked out a jar of jam from the shelve. "Here," she said, holding it out to him and smiled. "I hope you like it."

"Thanks," Tsuna said, and held the jar of jam beside the bread and just eyed them grimly. "It's so weird, being so rich," he muttered and shook his head. "Thanks, Kyoko. I, uh. I appreciate it."

"No problem," she said, blinking at him. "I guess I'll see you at school sometime?"

"Yeah, I guess," Tsuna said and awkwardly backed away. He kind of wanted to tell her not to open her back to people like that – it was like asking to be knifed. But this was the peaceful past. "Um…Thanks again. Bye."

"Bye," she called back to him faintly, as Tsuna fled.

He spent most of the process of paying for the food – _paying_ with _money_ which was actually worth something! – quietly freaking out.

 

* * *

 

Kyoko kept thinking about the weird encounter she'd had with Sawada at the supermarket on her way to school the next morning. There was something a little strange about the whole thing – and not just the fact that Sawada had looked like he wanted to run away the whole time. And on top of that, there was the incident at school the previous day…

Kyoko didn't usually get involved with other people's problems – she didn't like being nosy like that. But it was hard not to care when someone looked like he was about to cry the whole time. There was something about Sawada's eyes that had just struck her and she couldn't stop herself thinking about it.

Folding her arms and humming to herself, Kyoko tried to put a finger on it. The boy had looked like he was really lost and overwhelmed. But that wasn't all of it. There was something else too. Something weird, something that had made the whole thing worse.

It wasn't like seeing a kid being lost which, granted, was kind of bad. It was worse. It was like seeing a grown up being lost. Like seeing someone strong crumble.

Kyoko hadn't ever really paid much attention to Sawada – he mostly kept to himself and didn't really talk to people. She thought he might've been bullied a little but as far as she'd been able to tell, it had never been… horribly bad. And though she'd always felt a little horrible for not helping him, well… she'd never really known him that well. No one did, she thought.

Thing was, he'd never seemed strong. Nor had he ever seemed broken in the way he'd looked like at the store. It was… it was just strange and a little mystifying.

"Kyokoo!" a familiar voice called for her, and Kyoko looked up from her contemplation to see Hana coming towards her. "Good morning! You're not walking with your brother?"

"Morning," Kyoko smiled and shook the thoughts of Sawada from her head. "Ryohei had practice early on, plus there was some sort of meeting of club heads."

"Busy guy, your brother," Hana said and fell in to walk beside her. "So, how did you do with the chemistry homework?"

They continued on together, rehashing the homework between them to figure out if they'd both gotten it right, and Kyoko forgot all about Sawada – right up until they arrived at the school gates.

"What's he doing?" Hana asked, frowning at Sawada who was standing by the gates, frowning at the school. "Oi, Sawada, move it!"

The boy jerked a little at that and Kyoko blinked at the sudden posture change. Sawada bent his knees and bowed his back and something about his shoulders reminded Kyoko about her brother when they'd been kids and Ryohei hadn't yet learned how to hold his posture right. Something about protecting his belly too much?

Sawada's eyes found her and narrowed and for a moment Kyoko teetered on the edge of decision about how to go about greeting him. There was that look again – like he was lost and desperate somehow. "Good morning, Sawada," Kyoko said and ignored the confused look Hana gave her. "Are you going in?" she asked, not entirely sure why but for some reason it felt like something she ought to say.

Sawada glanced at the school and scowled at it. "…Yeah," he then said, like he really didn't want to. "I guess I am."

Kyoko smiled. "Great! Let's walk to class together."

Sawada nodded and waited until Kyoko and Hana walked past him before following a few steps behind. Kyoko could feel him staring again.

"Kyoko?" Hana asked under her breath. "What the hell?"

Kyoko shrugged and glanced at Sawada. He was staring at her a bit like he was trying to figure her out. "So, how did you do with the chemistry homework?"

Sawada blinked. "Homework?" he asked confusion. "There was homework?"

Hana groaned and Kyoko winced a little, her smile turning a little awkward for his sake. "Uh, yeah. There was," she confirmed and he frowned as if it was a foreign concept to him.

Ah, well. At least some things didn't seem to change.

 

* * *

 

Hibari stalked through the halls of Namimori Middle School, parting the people crowding the halls with his glare. So far the day had started out calm – they had had a meeting of the club captains and everyone seemed to be planning for a good, calm semester. Not that he cared – at some point the karate, kendo, boxing, and archery clubs would get at each other's throats if not for practice time and space then over potential members, but that was fine. He'd deal with that when it happened.

Right now he had different prey in mind.

He'd spend some time looking into the matter of Sawada Tsunayoshi. As far as he could tell the records they had of the scrawny kid were spot on – as far as his school activities went. There was a disparity between the records and what he'd seen the previous day, and the more Hibari had thought about it, the less he liked it. That kid he'd fought in the alley wasn't the no good of his class records.

No one with that much fight in them could be so unnoticeable for so long. So, either the records were wrong, Sawada was one hell of an actor, or… or something had happened to the kid recently. And Hibari was absolutely certain that the _something_ had happened in Namimori Middle School. Right under his nose. _Somehow_.

So, with every intention of getting to the bottom of the confusing herbivore's secrets, Hibari hunted. And again, it wasn't much of a hunt – he found Sawada in the hall outside 2-A, with a couple of his classmates – Sasagawa Kyoko with seventeen disturbances to her records and Kurokawa Hana with eight.

They were irrelevant. Sawada had his back to Hibari.

Hibari gripped his tonfa tighter and then pulled back. He made absolutely certain not to telegraph the attack in any way, making it swift enough that neither Sasagawa nor Kurokawa could even notice it, never mind warn Sawada of the oncoming attack.

Still, Sawada ducked below it – and not only that. He leaned so his weight was mostly on his hands and then made a wild sweep backwards with his leg, an attack obviously intended to kick the feet out from under his attacker. Hibari jumped back, satisfied.

His analysis of the previous day's fight had been spot on, then. Sawada's reflexes were just as fast as he thought they were – and his peripheral awareness was impressive, for a herbivore.

"Hibari!" Sasagawa said, staring at him in shock. "What on earth -?"

The split second distraction that caused was a split second too much. Sawada glanced over his shoulder and then rolled to his feet with a quick little twist that put him into a perfect launch position – and just as Hibari made to swing at him again, he launched into a dead run, weaving past Sasagawa and Kurokawa and dashing for the open classroom door.

Hibari swung his Tonfa back into position along his forearm, and ran after him. There weren't too many students in the classroom, and what few there were made quick escape at the sight of Hibari, which was just as well. The fewer distractions, the better.

Sawada spun around to face him, scanning the area quickly for escape. There was none. They were on the second floor, and the only door leading outside was at Hibari's back – no way for Sawada to take it without walking right into attacking range. Sawada glanced at the window, and Hibari could see him weighing the risks.

"Sawada," Hibari snapped, and the herbivore's gleaming eyes found his.

"…Hibari," the scrawny kid answered warily, still tense but his eyes clearing a bit.

"I have some questions for you," Hibari said, taking a proper fighting stance. "You will answer them promptly and clearly or you will face disciplinary action."

"Uhm," Sawada said, staring at him. "Does it have to involve weapons and if yes, can I have one?" he asked suspiciously.

Hibari scowled. "Carrying weapons of any sort that aren't directly involved with school projects or after school activates is strictly forbidden by Namimori Middle School rules of conduct."

Sawada blinked at that and his eyebrows arched, glancing at Hibari's tonfa meaningfully.

"Mine are directly involved with school activities – as the leader of the Namimori Middle School Disciplinary Committee I am permitted to carry any non-lethal weapons I choose to use," Hibari said.

"… Well, that's a little unfair," Sawada noted, backing away slightly. "And also stupid."

"Excuse me," Hibari asked dangerously and began advancing.

"Rules have nothing to do with self-defence," Sawada said and without another word, jumped out of the window.

Hibari blinked, honestly surprised by that action. Then he quickly rushed to the window, to see Sawada hanging from the outer window sill. As Hibari watched, the herbivore swung his body and launched at the rain gutter downspout and without further ado slid down along it until he hit the ground. Sawada then turned to the school gates, his body language telegraphing his every intention of making a run for it.

"Sawada, I won't tolerate another attempted absence!" Hibari growled at him, making the herbivore still and glance upwards at him.

"Well I'm not going to sit around being attacked by you, so I guess one of us doing to be disappointed," Sawada said, but didn't run off, eying Hibari suspiciously from below. "What the hell do you want, Hibari?"

"Tch," Hibari hissed and then, feeling the stares of Sawada's classmates on his back, hoisted himself over the window sill. Unlike Sawada, he forewent any useless clambering along the wall and simply jumped down. It was only two stories, after all.

"Answers," Hibari said, facing Sawada and aiming a tonfa at him. "Who taught you to fight?"

"No one," Sawada answered.

Hibari nodded at that. He'd thought as much. "Where did you learn how to fight?"

Sawada hesitated. "Namimori streets," he then answered.

"Why?"

Sawada was quiet for a while, just staring at him. "To survive," he finally said.

Hibari didn't say anything for a moment, just staring at him, trying to figure out what he meant by that. Survive _what_? You didn't hone your reflexes and self-preservation instincts to the level Sawada had just because of your usual school bullies. No, Sawada had learned to survive _lethal_ threats.

Interesting and suspicious.

After a moment of thought, Hibari swung one of his tonfa around and threw it in the air, catching it by the end. He held it out, grip first, at Sawada. Sawada, much to his credit, made no move to come forward to accept it. Hibari waited until he was sure the other wouldn't be moving, and then turned the tonfa back into position. "Preferred weapon?" he asked, his opinion of Sawada rising another infinitesimal notch.

"A crow bar," Sawada said slowly, his expression highly suspicious now.

Well that, at least, was something of a surprise. "Get one," Hibari said slowly. "Special dispensation for tomorrow alone."

Sawada eyed him narrowly, trying to gauge him. "You're a lunatic," he decided.

Hibari smirked. "I'll bite you to death, armed or not," he said and turned around. He spared a glance at the windows above them. It wasn't just class 2-A that was watching them – every window on the second level was packed to the brim with spectators. Hibari glared at them, and as they recoiled he stalked his way back indoors.

He had spent his whole life fighting herbivores and sometimes, very rarely, carnivores. Sawada would be his first scavenger – and he was looking forward to it.


	4. Chapter 4

It was weird how something as simple as having a crowbar was so comforting. The peaceful past or not, having a familiar tool calmed down Tsuna like nothing else had so far. Even if it was so unlike the one he'd had – this one was brand new and rust free, a little heavier than his own, a little less banged up – it was still familiar. It was solid and sturdy and he could immediately tell he could trust it.

He probably should've been a bit more embarrassed about buying it and about bringing it home. Even with his messed up sense of the appropriate for this time, he was pretty sure people didn't just carry crowbars around. As it was, the cashier had given him a suspicious look and his mother looked a little at a loss for words when he brought it home. But then another aspect came into play.

Here, no one asked about your intentions. The cashier hadn't and his mom didn't. Both just looked puzzled and then shook their heads like it wasn't their business. Because apparently it wasn't and it was _impolite_ to ask why someone was carrying a weapon around.

Though no one who wasn't playing a clichéd henchman didn't ask in the future either, but then, carrying any sort of heavy metal object was pretty self explanatory back there. Or back then.

"Tsuna, honey, how about you take a bath?" was in the end all his mother had to comment.

"A… bath," Tsuna said dully.

She gave him an amused, awkward little smile. "You're smelling a little rank, honey."

Tsuna stared at her for a moment, crowbar in one hand and school bag in the other. Then he looked down at himself, in his clean and pristine school uniform. "I really don't, though?" he said, confused. He could barely smell anything, except the roast she had in the oven which smelled absolutely heavenly.

"Just – have a bath, honey. Mamma's orders," Nana said finally, with exasperated little laugh. "And here I thought you'd finally grown out of fighting against bath time. How about you take your new… toy upstairs and I'll run the bath for you."

"Run the bath for me," Tsuna said, staring at her in incomprehension. "Like… like a _bath_?" he asked with widening eyes as he thought about the bathroom with it's clean, polished tiles and running water – and bath tub. "Like a _bath_ bath?"

"Yes, like a _bath_ bath – what other kind of baths are there?" Nana asked with a laugh and headed for the bathroom, shaking her head. "Geez, that kid of mine…"

For a moment Tsuna just stood there, staring after her. Then he looked down at the crowbar he was holding – before dashing up stairs to stove his backpack and the crowbar away before running back downstairs and to the door to the bathroom. Where his mother was running a bath for him, with litres upon litres of water. Water which was so warm Tsuna could see it _steam_.

"Well, since you're here, you might as well do it yourself," Nana said, standing up and running a casual hand over his hair. "And wash your hair too, honey, it's a little greasy."

"Yes, mom," Tsuna said, still staring at the bathtub. He felt a little like whimpering at the sight of all of the hot water.

Seeing it and trying to believe it was real had nothing on actually experiencing it though. Never mind the fact that there was running hot water to wash with, and plenty of soap to use. It felt like a horrible, wasteful luxury, but that moment when he slowly sank into the hot water…

It was a close thing that he didn't burst into tears right there and then. Not that it would've been the first time in the past, far from it.

"Geez," Tsuna murmured, shuddering with the heat and feeling the tension of years and years on run just leaching off him. "This time is so freaking luxurious…"

Maybe he'd get used to it with time. He kind of doubted it though, not after… after everything. There'd be no way he could ever again take these small – _huge_ – luxuries for granted like people in this time did, there was no way. After years and years of barely scraping by, of constant ache and hunger and cold…

Sinking deeper into the water, Tsuna released a soft hiss, rolling his shoulders. Tomorrow he'd have to fight Hibari again probably. He'd even bought a really nice crowbar for it and everything. Not that he was too worried about it. Hibari fought a little stiffly and there was something just… off about the way the guy fought that had Tsuna a little on edge. He'd never fought anyone who was so nice and polite about it. Some sort of long winded distraction thing maybe, or just a dupe to throw him off or something.

Any advantage was an advantage worth having in a fight, after all. And speaking of advantages in a fight…

"I really need to look into Millefiore and Byakuran," Tsuna muttered, staring at the water.

Well there'd be time for that later. Right now he'd enjoy the bath.

 

* * *

 

"He really did it," someone muttered under their breath. "He really brought a crowbar to school."

Hana looked up from her mobile and sure enough, there was Sawada Tsunayoshi walking towards the gates of Namimori Middle School – with a freaking crowbar in hand. He was holding it in a tight grip by the middle, the hook held downwards, and as he walked he was looking around not like he should've – like he was a huge embarrassment to everyone near him – but like he was expecting to be attacked.

Well, considering what Hibari did the previous day, that probably wasn't entirely unmerited.

"Do you think he's really going to fight Hibari?" a boy not far from Hana muttered to another. "With an actual _crowbar_?"

"Well they sort of fought yesterday?" the other boy muttered.

"All Sawada did was jump out of a freaking window to get away from Hibari," another boy said with a snort. "There's no way he can actually fight. This is No-Good Tsuna we're talking about."

"Well there is that thing he did to Kaneda…"

"You think that was anything but luck, really?"

Hana sighed at them, pushing her phone into her pocket and then looking at Sawada. There was something – a lot actually – weird about the boy, and he was still an idiot in Hana's book. But if nothing else, yesterday proved that he wasn't a suicidal idiot at least. Hana probably would've jumped out of a window, too, if she had Hibari after her after all. But seriously, a crowbar?

Sawada spotted her and looked at her with that weird suspicious-at-everything look he had going on now, and for a moment Hana was certain he was about to talk to her. Why Kyoko had wasted her time with the boy yesterday, Hana wasn't sure, but she had no intention of getting involved with anything Sawada was about. So, before he could say or do anything, she quickly turned and headed to the school yard. She could wait for Kyoko there.

Then she saw what was waiting in the school yard and regretted not waiting outside after all.

Sawada, if he was bothered by her cold shoulder, said nothing – he just walked in and after spotting Hibari and most of the Disciplinary Committee members standing around, obviously waiting, he sighed. Hibari, who stood apart and ahead of the rest of the group, was smirking like a cat about to be let loose in a freaking hatchery.

"Sawada," the Chairman of the Disciplinary Committee purred. "Bringing weapons to school is against the code of conduct."

"… You told me to bring it, Hibari," Sawada answered flatly.

"As punishment for breaking Namimori Middle School law, I will now bite you to death," Hibari said and without another word, rushed forward.

Hana, quickly skipping backwards to avoid getting anywhere _near_ what was happening, stared with surprise as Hibari and Sawada just… _clashed._ That was the only word that really fit – there was actual noise as they met, with Hibari's tonfa meeting Sawada's barely raised crowbar with a clatter of wood on metal. It was followed by a different kind of bang – of Hibari's tonfa on Sawada's elbow, as the prefect attacked, and the No-Good blocked.

It was like the whole school was suddenly there, all of them crowding around the edges of the yard, in the windows, around the gates – watching as the scariest kid in school fought with the worst nobody in the school. A nobody who was holding out for himself pretty damn well, considering that, well… he _was_ No-Good Tsuna.

No-Good Tsuna, it turned out, was a vicious little monster.

 

* * *

 

It wasn't like in the alley and it wasn't like the previous day at school. Sawada was a very different creature today. Was it just having a weapon this time?

Hibari narrowed his eyes and made a few testing swipes to see what sort of range Sawada had with the crowbar, what sort of heft he could get out of it. The thing was heavy for Sawada, that much was certain, and he wielded it with the same raw clumsiness he'd fought that first time. His swings were wide and over long, he over balanced a lot and left himself open for all sorts of counter attack. Like before, there wasn't any sort of _technique_ here.

But there was skill. No… there was _experience_. And something else.

Hibari attacked – Sawada saw it, and did his best to block in whatever way caused the least damage to himself. It was obvious he didn't know the attack and had never trained to block it – there wasn't that instinctual fluidness in the motion. No, it was just a reaction to something he _saw coming_. All his blocks were like that. Sawada used his shoulder and upper arm when possible, protecting the weaker bones of his lower arm, and when he had to use his lower arm he tried to literally elbow his way out of trouble. And he was constantly kicking, trying to keep Hibari at an arm's length. Trying to force a safe distance.

His attacks, though, those were interesting. And _brutal_.

Sawada didn't fight to incapacitate, not really. He was holding back a _little_ maybe – he was using the bend of the crowbar, not the hook itself – but the spots he were aiming for, the attacks he launched… They were all designed – in the loosest possible definition of the word – to kill as quickly as possible. And not because of the joy of the kill either.

No, even now Sawada's main goal was to protect himself. To end the fight as quickly as possible, and with minimal damage to himself.

"Scavenger," Hibari muttered, pleased. So far his read on Sawada was spot on.

"What?" Sawada asked, blinking at him sharply.

Hibari didn't answer, grinning widely and ferociously and finally pulling back for a proper attack, his tonfa swinging into position. He put his whole body into the attack, squeezing all the force he had into it, and aimed straight for Sawada's head.

Sawada swung the crowbar to meet the blow – it was like he was swinging a fucking baseball bat, it was pathetic. But effective. There was enormous crack as Hibari's tonfa met the metal of the crowbar, and Hibari could see the shock reverberate through the solid metal, could feel Sawada taking the impact full on to his wrists and elbows and shoulders. The kid _vibrated_ with the pain of it.

"Still _weak_ ," Hibari snarled, and though the right tonfa was now caught in the hook of Sawada's crowbar, he still had one hand free.

Sawada saw it, narrowed his eyes and twisted the crowbar in his hand. The edge of the hook's sharp end dug a groove into the back of Hibari's fingers and then, suddenly, the thing came right at his face. Only by jumping back did Hibari manage to avoid getting his nose broken by the solid metal.

"You fight really kindly, did you know that?" Sawada said and hefted the crowbar in his hands, obviously trying to get feeling back into his palms. Then he turned it around in his hands, and aimed the hook at Hibari. "Do you wanna switch weapons?"

"Why?" Hibari asked with disgust. "Mine are certainly superior to yours."

Sawada glanced down meaningfully, and Hibari did the same.

One of his tonfas – the one that had met Sawada's crowbar head on – had cracked and there was a visible dent where the wood had met metal. Meanwhile, Sawada's crowbar didn't have as much as a scratch.

With a slight snort, Hibari threw the broken tonfa aside, and switched the remaining one to his right hand. "I can beat you with one."

"Sure," Sawada said, watching him narrowly. "But can you _kill me_?"

With that said, he did something he hadn't done so far – and went on full offense.

 

* * *

 

Tsuna released a small breath and let the crowbar fall from his hands. His whole body was shaking and he couldn't feel his fingers anymore – tomorrow he knew he'd have blisters from hell, and probably enough bruises to cover most of him. Kind or not, Hibari was no push-over.

"You didn't bite me to death," Hibari commented from where he was nursing his injured arm. Both of his tonfas were lying on the ground, one of them in splinters and other cracked. The look he gave them was full of the hatred of the betrayed.

"Pretty sure killing another student is against school regulations or something," Tsuna muttered. He didn't like killing people, never had. It happened, but he'd rather just avoid it. As it was, he was definitely satisfied with Hibari being just unable to fight him anymore.

The other gave him a glare before picking himself up from the ground with a slight wince. "How am I kind?"

Tsuna glanced at him, rubbing at his aching shoulder. "I dunno," he said. "You just are. You fight nice," he said and stood up. "And you fight formal. I mean, obviously, you've trained with martial arts and stuff, but… you fight just to fight."

"And you fight to survive," Hibari murmured. "You're interesting, scavenger. We'll be doing this again."

With that said, he limped off with as much dignity as he could manage – which, judging by the look of how the people watching them parted ahead of him, was a lot. As the rest of the Disciplinary Committee headed hurriedly after their boss, Tsuna sighed and picked up his crowbar with slightly trembling fingers. He was a little dizzy and every move _ached_ and he had a bad feeling he wouldn't be able to walk tomorrow.

Hibari was damn strong and Tsuna was darn grateful he never once fought to kill. The guy would've been unstoppable, if he had even for a moment fought with a survivor's mentality.

"That was…" Tsuna looked up to see Kyoko standing not far from him, staring at with wide, horrified eyes. "Sawada are you – are you _okay_?"

"That was _awesome_!" someone suddenly shouted.

"What the hell even happened?"

"Did No-Good Tsuna just do that?"

"What's happened to him – that can't be Tsuna?"

"Did he just break Hibari's _arm_?"

The cacophony of voices after the near silence that had surrounded them during the fight was suddenly overwhelmingly loud, and Tsuna winced. He'd managed to block out the spectators for the fight – had to, Hibari would've beaten him in no time flat if he had let himself be distracted. But now…

Someone decided to slap him on the back in something like congratulations – and Tsuna very nearly swung the crowbar at his face. The only reason he didn't was because suddenly Kyoko was there, her hand gentle and light on his bruised shoulder. "Come on," she said softly. "To the nurse's office."

"Make away you _idiots_!" a female voice called and Tsuna glanced up to see the girl that hung with Kyoko – Kurokawa maybe? She grabbed Hibari's broken tonfa's from the ground and brandished them threateningly, holding them by their length like hammers. "Move it of you'll get it!"

It was only then that Tsuna realised that he was swaying dangerously on his feet and only Kyoko was really holding him up now. Confused and grateful, he leaned on her as Kurokawa shouted a way for them through the crowd, and Kyoko half dragged him from the yard and indoors.

With the adrenaline draining from his system, the pain of the numerous hits he'd taken started to make itself known and with slight confusion Tsuna realised he could taste blood. Huh. His nose was bleeding too. Had it been bleeding before? Had Hibari broken it?

"There we go, just one foot in front of the other," Kyoko murmured to him. "Come on, Sawada, you can do it."

"Tsuna, it's Tsuna." he gasped. "Uh. I think I'm bleeding on your shirt?"

"My brother does it all the time – I'm used to it," Kyoko sighed.

On Tsuna's other side, Kurokawa grabbed his free arm, wrestled the crowbar from his grip and then hoisted his arm over her shoulder. "Come on," she grunted. "Move your ass, No-Good Tsuna."

"Rude," he muttered, but did his best.

Turned out Hibari had nearly given him a concussion, nearly broken his nose, nearly cracked several of his ribs and nearly given him serious bruises which nearly required hospital attention. As it was, the nurse practically covered him in ice packs and was fretting over whether he needed to go to the hospital. In the end she decided not to – but she would be keeping him for the rest of the day to treat the bruises and make sure he hadn't seriously sprained anything.

"That guy's really nice," Tsuna muttered against an ice pack and smiled to himself while Kyoko and Kurokawa both sputtered at him in horror. He had a bad feeling Hibari wouldn't be letting him off so easy the next time, but he'd cross that bridge when he got to it.

Right then, he was mostly just looking forward to getting home – and maybe having a nice hot bath.


	5. Chapter 5

Nana dropped the glass she was holding and it shattered loudly on the floor between her and Tsuna. Tsuna glanced down at it and his expression – what little she could see of it under all of the _bruises and bandages_ – didn't change. "I'm home," he said softly, smiling, and then crouched down to pick up the glass shards.

"T-Tsuna?" Nana said, finally managing to find her voice. "Honey, your face – what's happened to your face?!"

"Hm, what – Mom, watch it, there's glass on the floor!" Tsuna said and as she made a move to step towards him, he pushed her back. "Just – hang on a moment, I'll clean this up," he said and held her back with one hand – and his hand was bandaged too, gauze wrapped around his knuckles.

"Tsuna, sweetheart – _what's happened to your face_?" Nana demanded and, since he wasn't letting her move forward, she crouched down and reached to touch his face. His cheek was swollen and there was a plaster hiding what she had to assume was a scrape or a cut on his cheek. "Honey, look at me - you look like – who did this to you?"

"Mom, it's – it's okay, it's nothing," Tsuna said, lifting his hand and patting hers comfortingly before pulling her hand away. "Let's just clean up the glass, okay?" he said gently. "Come on, we don't want to cut ourselves, right?"

"Tsuna, honey –" Nana struggled for a moment not sure what to say. He was hurt and yet he was, what, soothing her? What on _earth_? "Tsuna," she said, a little stronger and took his face between her hands. "Sweetheart, you're all beat up! Someone did this to you. What happened?"

He looked at her, confusion all over his face. "It's okay mom, it's nothing –"

"No it isn't," she said sharply because her boy was injured and someone _did_ this to him and he was acting all strange. "Does this have something to do with that thing you bought yesterday? Did you get that crowbar knowing that something like this would be happening?"

There, a hint of sheepishness – and even that was wrong because for heaven's sake, Tsuna was all beat up and he was _sheepish_ about being caught? Nana pressed forward, confused and a little scared, because this, this reminded her of all those time before Iemitsu had started working longer and longer and – "Tsuna," she said, her eyes firm on his. "Are you in some kind of trouble?"

Now he looked surprised – he even laughed a little. "No, mom, everything's fine – everything's excellent," Tsuna said and squeezed her hand gently. "I'm fine, alright – nothing's –"

"Nothing's _nothing_ ," Nana said. "You're all black and blue! Someone hurt you – someone hurt my boy and –!"

"Ah," Tsuna said awkwardly, tugging weakly at her wrist to try and get her to release him, which she of course didn't. "Um. I hurt him right back…?"

"You did what?!"

He winced under hands. "It was mutual – um, it was like, uh, like a spar?" he asked awkwardly. "It wasn't even that bad really – just few bruises and –"

"Your nose is all red and your eyes almost swollen shut! And don't think I didn't notice you limping!"

"– And no one was hurt that seriously or anything, a few days and it will be alright again and – " Tsuna winced again, staring at her strangely. "Um… it's okay, I'm okay – he's okay, everyone's okay – can we just put the glass away before someone gets hurt?"

" _Before someone gets hurt_?!" Nana stared at him in frustrated dismay because – it was like talking to a cushion! "Honey, what on earth's gotten into you?" she asked desperately. "What are you even saying – you're all bruised and you're not even – you must be hurting and – what is going on here?!"

"Nothing, mom; nothing's going on and nothings gotten into me, I'm _fine,_ " Tsuna said clearly and soothingly. "It's alright, everything's all right, okay?"

For a moment all Nana could do was stare at him with her mouth gaping open when it dawned on her what he was doing, what he sounded like. Like he was trying to very gently calm down a hysteric person – like it was her who needed soothing and he who needed to do the soothing, and …

Letting out a disbelieving little breath, Nana leaned back and then watched, utterly at a loss for words, as Tsuna quickly cleared away the broken glass, piece by piece, and threw it in the trash. He even got a brush to clear away the smaller shards – and then, once he was done, he reached out a hand to her. "Come on, mom," he said, still soft and soothing like she was something that would break and he needed to be as soft as wool to keep her safe from… from what?

"Up you get," Tsuna said, and up Nana got, still so, so _confused_.

"I'm calling your school," she said, her voice a little flat. "I'm getting to the bottom of this."

"There's no need to do that," Tsuna said calmly, hand on the small on her back, guiding her – _steering her_ – to the kitchen table. "Just sit down for a moment, alright? I'll make you some tea, okay?

Nana just blinked at him, and watched as he did as he promised, actually fixing her a cup of tea – very carefully and meticulously measuring the tea just how she liked it before sitting down across from her.

He'd been a little strange for a couple of days now. Nana hadn't let herself worry because Tsuna had his little phases – her favourite still being the time when, for about a week, he had wanted to be a robot and had acted like one too. She'd figured that it was like that, maybe something triggered by the nightmare he'd had the other day, but this…

This was something entirely different from moments of confusion and arguments over bath time. This soft spoken soothing person on the other side of the table was… something different.

Blinking her suddenly dry eyes, Nana looked down to the tea he'd made for her, and then pulled it close. It smelled good, and the colour was just right.

Tsuna had never made her tea before.

"Is it okay?" Tsuna asked, still soothing, watching her carefully. Like trying to make sure _she_ wouldn't break when it was he who was already –

"Thank you, sweetheart," Nana said faintly. "It's perfect."

"Good," Tsuna said, smiling with clear relief. "Then everything is alright, yeah?"

Nana swallowed and her hands shook as she lifted the cup for a sip. "Yeah," she said. "Everything's alright."

No. No it wasn't.

 

* * *

 

Tsuna sighed, falling to sit on his bed and running a slightly shaking hand over his face.

He'd forgotten how... how bad it was, when his mom got scared.

It had been so long though. Nana had… survived for a while, yeah, he'd kept her alive for a good few years but… she'd never really been all there, not since the start. He couldn't really remember what it had been like before, back when things had been okay – the years had faded out those memories, washed them of colour and depth and he'd only remembered that past shining fantasy place of happiness and ease. He didn't really remember how his mother had been, before…

Before she'd stopped being there, mostly.

Well, she'd been there, occasionally – sometimes she'd even known what was going on. But the line between being a little too aware of things and of being not aware at all had been a very fine one indeed. Sometimes all she'd been able to do was huddle in the nearest corner and weep – the other times, she'd somehow managed to fool herself into thinking that everything was like it had been, and the sound of bombs falling was nothing but a passing parade.

Being here, in this peaceful past, was like being stuck with that delusional mom he remembered and dearly loved – but here, that was the reality. And boy was he glad of it. She was so much brighter, when she was happy.

And yet that terror was familiar too – and it hurt just as much here as it did back there.

Falling to lay on his back on the bed, Tsuna winced slightly, his ribs aching. Fighting with Hibari had been a bad idea. Getting himself injured and then coming home with those injuries… why had he ever agreed to it? Why had he gotten the crowbar? Why had he ever thought that it would be a good idea, any of it?

"I have no idea what I'm doing," he muttered to the ceiling which, thankfully, offered no judgement. "I have no idea what I'm doing here."

One thing was certain though. He didn't want to scare his mom. Not like this, not again. Which meant that he had to deal with Hibari or… something. He couldn't come back home injured like this. It made her scared, so he had to avoid it in the future. Somehow.

"Being happy is kind of hard," he told the ceiling.

 

* * *

 

Nana stared at her hands, tightly clasped together. She'd been quietly fretting to herself since Tsuna had retreated to his room, and the more she thought about it, the less sure she was of… of anything. She thought she knew her son, that if nothing else, she knew her little boy. But there he'd been, acting like a stranger – and worse than that. Acting like _she_ was a stranger. Like she was something he needed to watch out for, something he needed to coddle. As if he was the parent and she the child!

Nana had no delusions of what she was like. She knew she wasn't all that smart and she wasn't the most observant – she missed things that were plainly obvious to others and things sometimes just… flew past her head. She didn't get jokes sometimes, and had never understood sarcasm and sometimes those little things that were plain fact to others were gibberish to her. She wasn't as quick on the uptake as some were. She knew that. It had been part of her life for as long as she could remember.

She couldn't have… missed something, right? She saw Tsuna every day, she knew how he did in school, what he liked, what food was his favourite, how he slept, how he kept his room. She knew her little boy. Didn't she?

Tsuna had never acted like that with her. Yes, sometimes he seemed a little frustrated, sometimes he was a little embarrassed, but what child wasn't a little embarrassed about their parents? Right? That was normal. What Tsuna had done, how he'd acted; that wasn't. Nana was certain it wasn't.

Twiddling her fingers a little, she looked up and towards the stairs leading to the upper floor and to Tsuna's room. She was certain of something at least. No matter how he'd tried to ignore it, he was hurt – someone had hurt Nana's son. She knew bruises like the ones on Tsuna's face, and the bandages on his hand… and she was certain she'd seen bruises on his forearms too. It had been a beating Tsuna had gotten. She was certain of that.

Iemitsu had once come home looking something like that. It hadn't been long after that he'd stopped… his work had gotten much busier, after that. And when she'd asked about it, he'd talked softly to her too. Not quite as softly as Tsuna had, but…

It was familiar. And it hurt, a little. And she didn't know what to do. Maybe she could –

The doorbell rang, and Nana almost jumped out of her skin, her heart skipping a beat. Then, sighing and shaking her head, she quickly got up to answer it. Maybe it would put the whole thing out of her mind for a moment and she could calm down a little.

No such luck.

"Um. Hello, Mrs. Sawada?" one of the two girls outside her door said a little awkwardly. Both were wearing Namimori Middle School uniforms. "Um. I'm Sasagawa Kyoko – and this is Kurokawa Hana, we're from Tsuna's class, um… We came to bring him his homework, since he missed classes today?"

"He did?" Nana asked faintly.

"Um, yeah, he was in the nurse's office because… um," Sasagawa Kyoko winced a little.

"Because he's an idiot," Kurokawa Hana said a little flatly. "Is he here?"

"Yes, he is, but…" Nana frowned. "Could you please tell me what happened to him? He wasn't very forthcoming about… anything, really."

The girls shared a look, Kyoko looking a little guilty. Hana snorted. "There's this guy in our school – Hibari Kyoya?" she said, like Nana should know the name. "He runs the Disciplinary Committee – or well… he runs the delinquent gang called the Disciplinary Committee. Anyway. For some reason Hibari and Tsuna got into a fight. It was stupid as all get out – pretty sure Hibari actually challenged Tsuna to a duel and everything. Just dumb stuff. So," she shrugged. "That happened."

"Oh," Nana said. It didn't actually explain much.

"So, uh…" Kyoko glanced around awkwardly. "We've got Tsuna's homework?" she more asked than stated.

"Um, right, of course – uh," Nana stepped back quickly to let the two girls in. "So, you're Tsuna's friends?" she asked.

"Eh," Hana answered, making a _so-and-so_ motion with her hand.

"Yes," Kyoko said with a nod. "He's our friend. Or we're _his_ friends, at any rate. Aren't we, Hana?"

Nana eyed the pair as the girls had a small battle of wills and finally Hana nodded. Well… alright then. "I'm glad – Tsuna hasn't had friends before," she mused. "I hope he's not being any trouble to you."

"Too late," Hana sighed and even Kyoko looked a little sheepish.

Somehow seeing their reactions was enormously comforting. Nana shook her head and sighed a little, her nervousness easing a little. "Tsuna's room is up the stairs," she said. "First door on the left. Are you girls staying for long? Tsuna, um… he's not very good with homework."

"Oh, we know," Hana said.

"Maybe we can help him," Kyoko said, brightening up a bit. "I mean, with what happened, he probably will have a hard time – uh, harder than usual? We could give him a hand – since he missed the class and everything too."

"That would be so nice of you girls," Nana said, and managed to smile a little. "I'll bring you lot some snacks in a moment, alright?"

"Thanks, Mrs. Sawada!" Kyoko said brightly, and then headed upstairs, Hana following her with a sigh. Nana looked after them as they went, and something inside her eased a little.

She still didn't know what was going on, but… at least whatever was going on, Tsuna didn't seem so alone anymore? It was still very weird, and the memory of Tsuna speaking softly to her still made her uneasy, but… she didn't feel so scared anymore. And at least now she knew what had happened. Tsuna had gotten into a fight. Had been _challenged_ to a fight.

Hesitating for a moment, Nana turned away from the stairs and faced towards the kitchen. The house phone was on the table there.

Tsuna and his friends could wait for a little while, she decided. She had a phone call to make.

 

* * *

 

 

"You are an idiot," Hana said.

"Yeah," Tsuna agreed.

"You probably scared your mom."

"Yeah."

"You should apologise to her."

Tsuna sighed. "Yeah."

Kyoko looked between the two of them, not entirely sure whether to smile or wince at them. Tsuna looked even worse than he had when they'd helped him to the nurse's office – the bruises had started going dark and his face was a little… well a lot swollen. He didn't seem too bothered by it, but it looked really painful. And the fact that Hana looked a little like she wanted to poke Tsuna probably didn't bode well.

"Um, how about," Kyoko said, "we just do homework. And not argue."

"Who's arguing," Hana muttered while sitting down. Tsuna shrugged and sat down as well, looking between them a bit uneasily, but it wasn't the bad, lost sort of uneasiness, so… that was something.

With determination, Kyoko pulled out her books and from between them, she got the sheaf of papers that were Tsuna's homework. "Here. Maths, Geography, Chemistry, and English."

"… Thanks," Tsuna answered and then looked at the papers like he wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with them.

"Oh for – " Hana grumbled dug out her own books from her backpack. "Let's start with English. Don't sit there like a lump - get your books, No-Good Tsuna!"

"Um, right, uh… sorry," Tsuna said, and quickly went to rummage through his rather messy desk, looking for his books. Kyoko met Hana's eyes behind her back, smiling awkwardly at the flat look Hana gave her. She'd make it up to her, Kyoko though. She'd buy Hana that magazine she was looking forward to getting, maybe.

"So, uh," Tsuna said, turning back with the books his hand. "English, huh?"

"Sit your ass down," Hana said. "Let's go through this quickly."

It wasn't exactly a surprise that Tsuna had trouble keeping up. He squinted at the sentences he was supposed to translate a bit blearily and while Kyoko could tell he was trying at least… well. It didn't seem to be doing much for him. He couldn't even sound the words right, garbling them whenever he tried to pronounce them, and judging by the looks of it he had no idea what they meant.

Hana squinted at the boy as he turned a perfectly simple English sentence into complete gibberish. "How haven't you been held back a year or two?"

"… Luck?" Tsuna asked faintly and scratched at the bandage on his cheek. "How is this useful anyway?" he muttered then, poking his pen at the translations without making much of a mark. "What do you use this stuff for?"

"… It's English," Hana said flatly. "Everyone speaks English! It's the lingua franca of the modern age! Everything is in English!"

Tsuna looked at her strangely. "I thought that was Italian," he said thoughtfully.

"Italian?" Hana asked incredulously. "Who speaks Italian?"

"Everybody?" Tsuna said awkwardly and then frowned. "I mean… don't they?"

Kyoko and Hana shared a look, a little amused on Kyoko's part and beyond exasperated on Hana's. "Not as far as I know," Hana muttered and looked at Kyoko with a fake cheerful smile. "Do you speak Italian, Kyoko?"

"I'm afraid not, but I know a bit of English," Kyoko said, smothering a giggle.

Hana nodded seriously and turned to Tsuna. "Do you speak Italian, No-Good Tsuna?"

"Sì," Tsuna answered. "Parlo italiano."

"What?" Hana asked flatly.

"What?" Kyoko asked, blinking at him.

Tsuna looked between them. "… What?"


	6. Chapter 6

As he walked to school the next day, every muscle aching twice as hard as it had the day before, Tsuna decided it was time to start looking ahead. The past was… peaceful, but different from what he'd really remembered. It wasn't quite as easy as he thought it would be. The difficulties were different from his horrible future, but they were still real and still difficult – and actually, somehow they were even worse than what he was used to.

He knew what to do when he encountered group of bandits or a trapped house or even a Millefiore patrol, he knew what to do when bombings started or when there was a threat of a sniper. He knew how to deal with those difficulties. These soft, mostly internal problems of the past were harder in comparison.

Thing was, he had no idea what to do about school. It had been years and years since he'd had to do maths problems or turn in his English homework and though part of him had longed for those peaceful, easy problems, now that they were ahead of him… well. The truth was he didn't remember much from school. Algebra went completely over his head. What little about English he understood came from what similarities it had with Italian – and he couldn't write Italian, so that didn't actually help him much at all. Geography was something he hadn't needed to think about in years – there had never been any hope of leaving Namimori after the transportation industry had collapsed. Chemistry…

Sighing, Tsuna ran a hand through his hair. Education was such a ridiculously unimportant thing in the future. Knowing maths didn't help you escape from a Millefiore convoy and geography didn't help you sneak your way through bullet riddled ruins. He remembered early on, when there had still been _groups_ of survivors, when they'd tried to hold together some simile of civilisation in their bunkers and hideouts, there had been people, highly educated people… who'd been pretty much useless. Important business men and administrators and people like that, who'd barely been able to contribute.

There had been one guy, an actor or something like that, he'd had something to do with making TV series. The guy had downright refused to help others scavenge because it was beneath him. He'd demanded that his _fans_ do it for him while he lounged back and waited for things to _return to normal_. And there had been that guy, a lawyer or something, who'd bossed everyone around as their leader and never did any actual work.

That shelter hadn't lasted for very long, in the end.

"I guess in this time, those guys would be the winners," Tsuna mused. Here no one needed survival skills – society had it all figured out and there was food just out there in every supermarket for anyone with money. And it was those guys with their non-survival skills who had the money. And in the meantime there was Tsuna. He'd survived the apocalypse for years – and in this peaceful time he had no idea what to do. Or how to do anything.

He'd been… weirdly happy, about that fight with Hibari. Because it was something he knew how to do, even if the fight had been for a different purpose than what he was used to, it was a skill he'd pretty much mastered. It had felt like he'd figured something out and he'd been almost glad of it.

Up until the point he came home and freaked the daylights out of his mother.

Tsuna sighed and let his hand drop to his side. No, fighting and survival skills weren't valuable here. If anything they were weird and abnormal, probably. No, what was valuable were Maths and English and test scores and stuff like that. And he supposed it was something he needed to not only get used to, but to figure out.

"Oi, Sawada!" a voice called for him and Tsuna glanced around, tensing a little. It was a boy he didn't know – probably not from his class since his face wasn't too familiar. "That thing you did yesterday, with Hibari, was so _extreme_! Where did you learn that, who taught you? Do you always fight with a crowbar? Where did you even get a crowbar?"

"What?" Tsuna asked, blinking at the blond boy. "Sorry, uh... who are you?"

"Sasagawa Ryohei!" the boy said and then suddenly shoved a hand at Tsuna's face. Tsuna automatically grabbed the offending hand by the thumb and twisted sharply to the side and with a yelp the boy twisted with the movement, following the move and crashing down to his knees to try and stop his thump from dislocating. "Ow, ow!" he gasped and then, staring at Tsuna's hand and his own, almost broken thumb, he grinned. "That was _extreme_! Where did you learn that? Hey, do you want to join the boxing club?!"

"What?" Tsuna asked again and, with a guilty wince, released the boy's hand. "Um, sorry."

The boy wiggled his thumb a bit and then jumped to his feet as if nothing had happened. "Boxing club," he said, grinning at Tsuna. "We usually have practice every morning before school, starting around six a.m. – and there's usually some club members around after school. And between classes. You're pretty strong _and_ you beat up Hibari! You should come see us after school!"

"Um," Tsuna said slowly. Boxing, as in fighting – as in bruises and probably worrying his mother. "No."

"Why not?!" Sasagawa Ryohei demanded and then narrowed his eyes. "I see – you're one of the type of men who can only communicate with their fists – I see! Then I will speak to you in a language you understand!"

As Tsuna watched, the blond boy put up his fists, taking what Tsuna only vaguely recognized as some sort of boxing posture. "Join the boxing club!" Sasagawa Ryohei shouted at him, and then wound his arm back for a punch.

Tsuna ducked quickly under it and then, without further ado, ran away.

 

* * *

 

Extremely vexed with his subordinates and everyone else in general, Hibari stalked the Namimori Middle School hallways for Sawada. The cast on his left arm was heavy and it itched and he was not in any way happy that he'd have to wear it for the next month or so. It was Sawada's fault, and Hibari was fully intending to make his annoyance over the matter known to the scavenger. He could still fight with just one arm, no matter what the doctor's orders were, and that was just what he was going to do.

And this time there's be zero _kindness_ involved.

"Don't you think you should maybe… give it a few days, at least?" Kusakabe asked carefully, trailing a few steps behind him.

Hibari aimed a narrow look at him.

"It's not just that you're injured and healing – Sawada is too," Kusakabe said diplomatically. "He was barely walking yesterday, wasn't he? Had to stay in the nurse's office for the rest of the day. So… you probably can't get a good fight out of him."

Hibari harrumphed at that, but it was a good enough point. Thing was, Hibari was fairly certain that Sawada could fight through his injuries no problem. He was a scavenger after all – a creature used to scraping by the skin of his teeth. If anything, injuries would only make him fight more ferociously. They _had_ made him fight more ferociously. The longer the fight yesterday had gone, the faster and harsher Sawada had been.

"I want to see the state he's in," Hibari decided. "I want to see how long it will take for him to recover. Find him for me."

"Yes, boss," Kusakabe sighed, and then headed off in a different direction to find Sawada. Hibari ignored him and continued on his way, stalking down the hall and parting any irritating crowding that he saw with his glare.

There was a lot more murmuring around him than there usually was, and it was infuriating. It seemed that the herbivores had taken what they'd seen yesterday and drawn some mistaken conclusions about it. Hibari cast a narrow glance at a group of boys who were looking at him speculatively and then smiled at them. Did they think that he was suddenly weaker since he'd lost to Sawada?

Better to disabuse them of their illusions before they got some _notions_ in their little herbivore heads.

"Crowding," Hibari murmured softly and lifted his single good arm – and one of his new tonfas. "Is against Namimori Middle School codes of conduct."

 

* * *

 

"You did what?" Kyoko asked with despair.

"Well, I tried to," Ryohei answered with a shrug, sighing with dismay. "But he just ran away. I guess he's not that strong after all, if he just… runs off like that."

"Ryohei, you – Tsuna got injured yesterday and you just tried to fight him?" Kyoko asked. "Are you – no never mind, of course you are," she sighed and then pushed at his shoulder. "Leave him alone – he's got enough on his plate with Hibari being after him, he doesn't need this stuff from you too! Besides, even Hibari challenged him first and gave him time to prepare and stuff."

"Hm," Ryohei hummed thoughtfully and then brightened up. "Then, if I issue a challenge to him --!"

Kyoko pushed at his shoulder a little. "Leave Tsuna alone – I mean it!" she snapped.

"But Kyoko – he beat _Hibari!_ He got to join our club – we need more extreme members like him! And if I don't get him to join our club, you can bet someone else will grab him for their club and –"

"No. Ryohei," Kyoko said firmly. "Tsuna doesn't need this and you will leave him alone or so help me I will -!"

"Are you talking about Sawada?" someone asked, and Kyoko glanced over her shoulder to see Mochida, the captain of the Kendo club, walking towards them. "You can't actually be thinking of getting him in your club, Sasagawa – the guy's a complete loser. Besides, he'd be no good for the boxing club – he uses a weapon after all," he snorted.

"What do you want, Mochida?" Ryohei asked with narrowed eyes. "Don't think you can snatch Sawada from the Boxing club -"

Mochida ignored him and instead looked at Kyoko thoughtfully. "Do you like Sawada, Kyoko?"

"Do I like Tsuna? Um… yeah, I guess?" Kyoko said slowly. "What about it?"

"Don't ignore me, Mochida! I'll kick your ass!" Ryohei snapped.

Mochida ignored him, his attention still on Kyoko. "Then, if I challenge him…" he trailed off and then pointed a finger at her. "Since Sawada uses a weapon, I will challenge him to a duel of swords – and the prize of victory will be a date with you!"

"What?" Kyoko asked flatly.

"There needs to be a prize for duels between men," Mochida said imperiously. "So, whoever wins will get to go on a date with you and –"

Ryohei let out an outraged sound beside her, but before he could do anything Kyoko had already wound her arm back, and as Mochida went on about how Kyoko would be the _prize_ of this hypothetical duel between him and Tsuna, she punched him square on the nose.

"Kyoko!" Ryohei cried in horror while Mochida recoiled back, stunned. "What are you _doing_?!"

"You hit me!" Mochida complained, touching his nose and making a face. "That hurt!"

"He was talking about me like I was a _thing_!" Kyoko snapped at her brother while shaking her now aching hand. Mochida had a hard face. "Like I was a prize you can just… win!"

Ryohei scoffed. "Yeah, but you can't punch a guy like that!" he snapped and she rounded on him in outrage. Ryohei continued seriously. "If you don't have gloves on, you don't punch your opponent in the face – you'll just break your fingers like that. No, either punch him in the gut, or the throat if you can get an angle at it," he said and took her hand to rearrange her fingers. "And don't hold your fingers like that – you'll just end up dislocating your thumb. Keep it on the outside, not inside your fist."

Kyoko watched as he corrected the fist she was making. "Now," Ryohei said seriously and took a boxing posture. "Aim for the gut, just above the belly," he said, and threw an example punch. "Like this."

Blinking, Kyoko mimicked his posture as well as she could, and punched the incredulous Mochida as hard as she could in the gut and then watched in wonder as he bent over, the breath leaving his body in one explosive gasp.

"And that's how you do it!" Ryohei said, satisfied, while Kyoko stared at her fist with surprise. Her brother gave her a considering look. "Hey," he then said. "That wasn't too bad. I mean, your posture is horrible and you need to learn to keep tour wrist straight and you're not winding properly and you just used your shoulder there –"

"Oi," Kyoko said warningly and shook her fist at him. "I'll punch you too."

Ryohei just grinned at her. "Ever thought of joining the boxing club, little sis?" he asked her seriously. "We could use more extreme members and that… that was pretty extreme."

 

* * *

 

Hana sighed as she listened to pretty much _everyone_ accounting how Kyoko had punched out Mochida. She was pretty sure it probably hadn't happened like everyone said it had – Kyoko was far too nice to punch a guy, even a guy as sexist as Mochida, in the balls. But she had no doubt that Kyoko _had_ punched him.

"This whole school's gone mad," Hana mused and then watched as Tsuna ducked into the classroom, walking around the crowd talking about Kyoko and sinking to his seat, almost unnoticed. Almost. But even the stories about the school icon punching out the captain of the kendo club wasn't quite enough to make people forget the fact that the previous day the school loser had beaten the school _demon_.

"So, Sawada," one of the boys said, turning to him. "You beat Hibari, huh?"

"I did?" Tsuna asked, shifting on his seat a little.

"You broke his arm, you know," the boy said, glancing at the other boys in the class. "I think that means you beat him. So, what does it feel like?"

Tsuna shrugged and didn't answer. The other boys shared a look and then walked closer to him,

"You know, I think you cheated," one of them said, leaning over Tsuna's desk. "A crowbar against wood tonfas, that's pretty unfair you know. I think –"

"You think _what_?"

Hana looked towards the door, not particularly surprised to see Hibari stalking into the room. The group of boys dispersed instantly as if someone had thrown a grenade in their midst, one of them, actually stumbling a little in his hurry to get away. Barely giving them a glance, Hibari walked over to Tsuna, who went tense and watchful at his desk – Hana could see him pushing back away from it, getting ready to bolt.

"Sawada," Hibari said and then fell to sit the wrong way around on the chair in front of Tsuna's, staring at him hard. He rested the arm he had in a cast on the backrest of the chair he'd commandeered, and said nothing else.

Tsuna stared back at him uneasily. "Hibari," he said slowly, leaning back slightly, eyes narrowed, obviously ready for everything.

Neither of them blinked or made the first move.

Hana sighed, running a hand over her face as No-Good Tsuna and the Demon of the Disciplinary Committee started a full on staring contest. She turned to her nearest classmate, figuring that since the whole school had gone mad, she might as well join the madhouse. "I bet fifty yen on No-Good Tsuna," she said, her voice utterly void of inflection.

"Are you insane?" Aki hissed under her breath, casting a nervous look at Hibari – who didn't even seem to notice, so intent he was in staring Tsuna down. Tsuna was staring back, eyes narrowed and gleaming. Neither was even moving anymore, frozen in time. "A hundred yen on Hibari," Aki then said.

"Ha, you're on," Hana said dug out her wallet.

As they realised that Hibari had no intention of leaving – and didn't seem interested in stopping them from _crowding_ or anything – the rest of the class soon started joining in on the bet. By the time Kyoko came in with a slightly bewildered look on her face, there was a neat little pile of money on Hana's desk and Aki was now keeping track of the bets on her notebook.

"Um," Kyoko said, glancing at Tsuna and Hibari. "What's going on?"

"We're starting an illegal gambling ring," Hana informed her. "Do you want in on it? One to four odds that Tsuna wins."

Kyoko blinked, staring at Tsuna and Hibari for a moment before shaking her head and taking her seat.

"Hey, Kyoko – did you really punch Mochida in the dick?" Aki whispered to her.

Kyoko sighed. "No, I didn't," she said and Aki made a disappointed face. "I punched him in the diaphragm, apparently," Kyoko said and glanced at Hana. "Hey, do you want to join the boxing club with me?"

"With your crazy brother? In your dreams," Hana snorted.

Kyoko sighed again. "Didn't think so," she mused and then looked over to Tsuna again. "So, uh, what's going on?"

"Dunno, but it's been going on for about five minutes now," Hana said with a shrug, glancing over at the two boys. "I'm pretty sure they're both insane, though."

The staring contest continued all the way until the teacher came in, at which point Hibari suddenly got up and just stalked out of the room without a single word, coat tails flapping as he walked. Tsuna blinked after him and then ran a hand over his eyes before looking towards Hana. "What just happened?"

"I have no idea, but I'm pretty sure I won," she said while a few students muttered in disappointment, and happily gathered her winnings.

 

* * *

 

Humming to herself, Nana bustled around the kitchen, getting everything ready. The kitchen table was already laden high with food, and she had more cooking on the stove – and in the oven there was the desert, the pie crust slowly turning golden brown. Looking over everything she smiled happily, and then turned to get the ingredients for the rest.

There was still a lot more to cook. There was no such thing as too much food when her hubby came home.


	7. Chapter 7

"And so I joined the boxing club, I guess," Kyoko finished explaining. "I don't think Ryohei will bother you again about it, but if he does, just tell me and I'll tell him to stop."

"Okay?" Tsuna answered, a little baffled by the whole thing. "Um. Did you _want_ to join the boxing club?" he asked slowly, not entirely sure if it was some sort of weird trade – that instead of him joining the club, she'd done it like some sort of… replacement or something.

Kyoko glanced at him and then let out a small laugh. "It's okay," she assured him. "It does kind of look like fun, and if it isn't, well. I can quit any time. Besides, it'll be nice to do stuff with my brother. He's always so busy with the club these days and is never home so…"

"Alright, if you say so," Tsuna said, and scratched at the plaster on his cheek – it was starting to come off. He didn't get this time, he didn't get Hibari, and he didn't get Kyoko's brother, and he didn't really get Kyoko either. They were all so different from what he remember people to be from his past – but if she said it was okay, he figured it was. "So, about boxing and fighting," he said slowly, thoughtfully. "What's the line of it being alright and it not being alright?"

Kyoko blinked and looked at him strangely. "How do you mean?"

Tsuna frowned, and peeled the plaster from his cheek. "Hibari," he said slowly. "I mean. I fought with Hibari. And I figure I probably shouldn't have?"

"Hmm," Kyoko hummed in answer frowning a little.

"But fighting in something like the boxing club – that's… okay?" Tsuna asked and sighed. "I guess my view on this stuff is a bit screwed – I've never fought for, I don't know, for the sake of fighting, I guess? It's never been fun for me – but I think Hibari fights because it's fun for him. And your brother too, probably, I got that feeling from him too. So, uh…"

"Oh," Kyoko said and folded her arms. "Hm. I guess it depends on the situation – and yeah, on whether or not you're having fun," she mused and peered up at the sky, deep in thought. "I mean, if one person is having fun fighting – but the other isn't? Then that's basically bullying."

Tsuna nodded slowly. "I get that," he said. "But there's some other line there, isn't there?" he asked. "That I don't think I'm getting."

"Okay, um. Well, why do you fight?" she asked, looking at him. "I mean, you are good at it, in… well your own way, I guess, you're kind of skilled. As far as I can tell anyway. So you've fought a lot, right? So… why do you fight?"

Tsuna frowned, looking at the plaster he'd peeled off his cheek. There was a bit of dried blood on it – but only a tiny little bit. Weird, using a band-aid for something so small and insignificant. "I fought because I had to," he said. "To survive."

Kyoko probably didn't get it – of course she wouldn't, she didn't know the truth. But she nodded anyway, looking a little worried. "Okay. Are you…" she trailed off and then tried again. "When you and Hibari fought, it was kind of violent. And different from how you'd do it in something like a boxing club. I mean, you broke Hibari's arm, that's kind of bad, but…" she hesitated for a moment and then looked at him levelly. "Did you enjoy it?"

Tsuna bit his lip, looking at the ground. "It freaked out my mom," he said. "So I shouldn't have."

"Yeah, she seemed a bit spooked," Kyoko agreed. "And I don't blame her – it was kind of scary to look at. But did you like it?"

"… Kind of?" Tsuna admitted finally. "I do regret breaking Hibari's arm, but… it was kind of enjoyable."

"… Right, that's not scary at all. But Hibari sort of kept egging you on, so he probably had fun too," Kyoko pursed her lips, looking a little conflicted about it. "Hmmm…"

"What is it like in boxing club?" Tsuna asked. "You fight with protective gear and stuff, right?"

"Well, I haven't actually done much in it yet," Kyoko said with a laugh. "I need to get my own gear because there aren't any girls in the club, and there isn't the right gear for me – and Ryohei wants to plan an actual training schedule for me and everything. But, yeah," she nodded. "And a lot of it's actually training against targets – punching bags and stuff. Most of it is actually like that. And you do warm ups, and there's rules and of course if someone calls uncle you stop, and so on. And yeah, protective gear too so that you don't actually get hurt."

Tsuna made a face. He couldn't imagine fighting like that. Well, he certainly wouldn't say no to protective gear in a dangerous situation – but rules and fighting didn't go hand in hand in his mind.

It was hard to correlate the idea of fighting for the sake of fighting – and fighting for the sake of necessity. Fighting for fun, and fighting for survival. There was part of him that kind of wanted to try it – fighting for the sake of fun. But at the same time, it seemed… wrong, somehow. Because it was something he'd done to survive, and something he'd used to seriously hurt people, adding _fun_ to it made it seem kind of horrible. And all the while there was how his mother had reacted. It was all muddled up.

And then there was Hibari, stalking him, sizing him up. They hadn't fought that day – probably because Hibari's arm was broken – but Tsuna knew it would probably happen again. Hibari would want another go at him.

Kyoko looked at him silently for a moment as they continued walking along the street. "Okay," she said determinately. "Let's break it down. You want to fight Hibari again, yes?"

"Maybe?" Tsuna said slowly.

"But you don't want to scare your mother again," she continued.

"No, I don't," Tsuna agreed.

"And in the meanwhile you probably don't want to be suspended from school, which you might be if something like that happens again," Kyoko said and then frowned. "I wonder… actually, why didn't anyone say anything about you and Hibari fighting in the school yard anyway? I kind of thought you _would_ get suspended for it. You fought with an actual _crowbar_."

Tsuna shrugged and frowned. He'd been wondering where it had gone. He'd lost it after fighting with Hibari and wasn't sure where it had gotten to. Had he dropped it? One would think that after all these years he'd know to take better care of his tools.

"Well anyway," Kyoko said. "I'm guessing you want to fight – but not that, um, horrifyingly?"

"It was horrifying?" Tsuna asked awkwardly.

"Kind of?" she admitted with a wincing smile. "Do you think you and Hibari could come up with some sort of… rules of engagement, maybe? I mean, you should at least have a mutual agreement to try not to break bones, or something."

Tsuna scratched at his cheek and nodded. That made sense – and made it sound a bit better. "Maybe."

"And also, maybe you shouldn't fight in front of the school. Try and do it in the gym or something. That way it'll be like… sparring."

Tsuna made a face at that, but nodded again. Planning to have fights before hand was so weird, but if it was in the gym then it wasn't like they were trying to kill each other. Actually it was probably better that he tried to stop thinking about it in those terms at all. Sighing he shook his head and then glanced at her. "Do you like fighting?"

"I don't know – I haven't actually ever fought, not really," Kyoko said, looking at her hand. "But I think… I'd like to know how to do it," she said. "I've never really thought of myself as weak before – but I probably could be stronger, you know? And it never hurts to know how to defend yourself."

"Very true," Tsuna said vehemently. He'd certainly feel better once she knew how to take care of herself. Even if it was such a peaceful time, well… his past had been peaceful too. Until it hadn't been. And who knew what the future would be from now on? Even if Millefiore didn't take over… who knew?

Then he frowned as he remembered something. Kyoko's friend. "Is Kurokawa going to join the boxing club with you?"

"Hana already knows self-defence," Kyoko said with a little laugh. "Her words are as cutting as knives when she wants them to be. Besides – she finds my brother kind of tiresome."

"He seemed very energetic," Tsuna agreed slowly, thinking back to the blond boy.

"Ah, you too?" Kyoko asked and grinned at the awkward look he gave her. "It's okay. Ryohei's always been like that. You get used to it."

Tsuna was still thinking about the whole thing concerning fighting as he arrived home, him and Kyoko having split off to head in different directions. He didn't like the idea of hiding things from his mother, or going behind her back, but… the thing was, he probably shouldn't let what little he knew about fighting be forgotten.

That future might've been erased by the floating girl with a tattoo on her cheek, but it was still a future – and she'd said it. There was a chance that something like it would happen again – and that was why someone had to remember. That someone being Tsuna. If the destructive future was still a possibility, then… he'd need to know how to fight.

He'd not thought about it much, too dazzled by the past to really think straight, but… why him? He'd been nothing but a scavenger, Millefiore didn't even know who he was. Except… maybe they did? And what had the girl said again – something about _another_ him?

Time travel was confusing, but the girl had given him this second chance for some reason, returning him to the peaceful past for a reason. So whatever knowledge he had of the future was probably… necessary for something. Best not to waste it.

"I need to get a new crowbar," he muttered and looked up as he arrived at the house. Or find where the previous one had gone, he mused and then frowned.

There was something different about the house. He could feel… something.

Eyes narrowed, Tsuna stared at the house hard. There was somebody inside with his mother.

Tensing, Tsuna moved forward slowly, ready for anything.

 

* * *

 

"… And then she was just following me around the supermarket, it was so adorable," Nana chattered happily as she rummaged around the cupboard, looking for something. "And there was this couple with their little girl – I think it was a girl anyway – that were following us around the supermarket because the little girl, I think she fell in love with her right away, children are like that – and they asked me if I knew her, if she was mine – and well, of course she wasn't but…"

Iemitsu leaned his cheek on his knuckles, watching her with a slight smile. He was pretty sure Nana had forgotten what she was actually looking for – she'd gone through the same cupboard twice now in the search. He'd rather shoot himself than distract her by pointing that out, though. She was on a roll now, glowing and laughing and he'd rather die than stop her.

God, but he'd missed her.

"… And well, eventually the manager came looking for us because some other customers had complained about her – I mean, I guess I understand, you shouldn't have animals in food isles. Living animals anyway," Nana said thoughtfully. "So they took the cat outside – I think the family with the little girl might've gotten her, maybe they took her home…" she stopped to consider that and then turned to him with a bright smile. "Should we get a cat, honey?"

Iemitsu smiled. "You can get whatever you want, love," he said and then bit his tongue on what rest he wanted to say. "But you should probably ask our boy," he added and then glanced around. "Shouldn't he be home by now?"

"Hmm," Nana hummed, frowning slightly and tapping her lips. "Tsuna," she said and looked at him. "I told you about him, right?"

"You did, darling," Iemitsu assured her and stood up, leaving the kitchen table and walking over to her. As he approached her, winding his arms around her, she immediately swayed into his hold, humming happily – and god, she smelled great, better than he'd remembered.

It had been far too long since he'd been home.

"He's being a little strange," Nana said, leaning her cheek against his shoulder and sighing happily. "It's been a few days now."

"You told me," Iemitsu assured her, squeezing her gently and pressing a kiss on her forehead.

It was why he was there now – Nana's disjointed, confused message on his answering machine about how Tsuna had been hurt and how he'd been weird with her, acting _softly_ with her. It took a lot to scare Iemitsu's wife – Nana didn't feel _fear_ like boring people did – but she'd sounded scared. Scared about their boy.

"I'll talk with him – man to man, get to the bottom of the whole thing," Iemitsu assured her, kissing her again. "And then, how about you and me go out for the night? We could have dinner and, uh," he stopped, glancing at the table – and the food that covered it. "Have dinner _here_ and then go out to a movie maybe?"

"That'd be nice, dear," Nana smiled happily, rubbing her cheek on his shoulder like a happy cat. "But I'm cooking," she then realised and struggled to get out of his embrace. "The dinner –"

"Is the dinner more important than hugs?" Iemitsu asked with a pout and as Nana paused to seriously consider that, he kissed her again.

It was easy enough to distract _her_ from what about Tsuna had scared her. Iemitsu himself had a harder time forgetting it, though – forgetting her tone of voice in her message, the way her words shook, how she stuttered. He tried not to look at it _professionally_ – Tsuna was his boy, it was a family matter – but there was always that risk, with families like theirs. Especially with _their_ family.

The risk of outsiders, reaching inward.

Hopefully it would be just teenage angst, maybe some sort of scuffle between boys. Tsuna was at the age to start get into trouble. Hopefully it wouldn't be anything… worse than that.

"A movie," Iemitsu said thoughtfully against her hair. "No, a show. _Theatre_ , we should go to the theatre."

Namimori had a theatre, right?

"That sounds expensive, honey," Nana laughed, feebly trying to reach for the cupboards all the while trying to lean against him. "How about just a nice long walk? We could go to the park, see the pond – I heard they did some maintenance last summer, cleared out some of the lilies because they were starting to get overgrown."

"Well, if you'd like – but I did just get a small bonus at work, for all the hard work I've been doing for the company," Iemitsu assured her, capturing her outstretched hand and kissing the back of it. "We could spoil ourselves a little, you and I."

"Well, if you're sure, honey." Nana laughed, flashing him with a proud smile. "You do work so hard finding all that oil, I guess it wouldn't hurt to have a bit of a treat."

"Precisely," Iemitsu grinned and then frowned, tensing a little. Suddenly wishing dearly he had his side arm, he glanced over his shoulder.

Tsunayoshi was standing silently at the kitchen doorway, staring at them expressionlessly. How the hell had the kid snuck up on him like that? Iemitsu hadn't even heard the _door_ , hadn't felt his presence. Then he took Tsuna in more closely, really looked at him.

Tsuna had bruises on his face and a scrape on his cheek and his _eyes_ …

"Tsuna, honey!" Nana said, noticing their boy. "Look who's come home! Isn't it wonderful?"

Tsuna blinked slowly, and said nothing, expression not shifting, just _watching_ them. And it wasn't just the look in his eyes – a thousand yards deep and utterly weary – that was so horrible. It wasn't even the utter lack of recognition in Tsuna's face. No, it was the way they gleamed.

Tsuna's eyes were shimmering with a steady inner _Flame._

"Well, Tuna-Fish?" Iemitsu asked, and his voice sounded strange even to his own ears. "Won't you say hello to your papa?"

That got a reaction – Tsuna frowned, confused. "My… papa," he repeated slowly, like it was a foreign word he'd never heard before and wasn't sure how to pronounce right.

"Tsuna," Nana said, her cheerful smile fading and something a little more frantic entering her voice. "Is this how you welcome your father home after his long trip?" she demanded.

Tsuna blinked at that, and now he looked _stunned_. "Father," he said. Then he said,"huh" in something like realisation and without another word he turned around and just walked away. The moment he was out of view, it was almost as if he'd never been there at all – he was so quiet. Only the click of a door closing upstairs signalled that he'd gone to his room, rather than vanished into thin air.

Iemitsu and Nana stood silently by the kitchen counter for a moment, and it was hard to say who was more stunned, she or he. Swallowing, Iemitsu blinked and then turned to Nana. "H-how long has he been acting… strangely?" he asked slowly.

"A few days, I think?" she said quietly, staring heartbrokenly at the doorway where Tsuna had been. "I didn't… I didn't really pay attention at first – I didn't notice, I thought he just… had a phase but…" she shook her head and looked up to him. "Honey…"

"I'll –" Iemitsu started and swallowed again.

He'd, what? Take Tsuna to a Vongola clinic specialising in these things to make sure he wasn't under mind control, that he hadn't been brain washed, his memory tampered with? That was what he _wanted_ to do – along with calling Croquant to see if the Mist Guardian had time to come see Tsuna, to disperse any illusions he might be under.

Tsuna was under _something_. It hadn't been that long since Iemitsu's last visit, and yet Tsuna didn't know him, didn't remember a thing about him. And considering that the last time Iemitsu had been home they'd got into a very loud shouting match… whatever it was, it was potent. Maybe even irreversible.

"I'll handle this," Iemitsu assured his wife, kissing her temple gently all the while glaring at the doorway. "Don't you worry a thing, darling. It'll be alright."

Seemed like his visit to Namimori wasn't going to be as brief as he thought it would be. Someone – or some _thing_ – had gotten to his boy, had gotten into his mind, had put _Flames_ into his eyes. The one thing Iemitsu had always feared, and it was in Tsuna's _head_.

There'd be hell to pay once he got to the bottom of it.


	8. Chapter 8

Tsuna took a moment to just lay back on his bed, not moving, staring at the ceiling. Mentally preparing for the day ahead.

Yesterday had been… weird. He wasn't sure what to think about it – about the man who was apparently his father. _Was_ his father. What a weird thing to think about after so long – that he had a… a _father_. Whom he called papa, apparently, though he wasn't so sure about that, really. It didn't sound right. Maybe it had been a joke?

He didn't remember much anything about his father from before. Everything about the past had kind of blurred together after a while, and Sawada Iemitsu had been one of those things. He'd been more Tsuna's mother's memory than Tsuna's own, really – this shadowy by-gone being that existed only in her dreams and wishes. Tsuna remembered him through Nana's words. "Your dad, Tsuna honey, he was such a strong man, I'm sure he's fine, where ever he is…" or "Iemitsu, Iemitsu where are you, you need to come and save your family, Iemitsu please!"

It hadn't really meant much of anything, really. Iemitsu wasn't there, and he never came. Of course not. Tsuna figured Iemitsu probably died in the early bombings. Which one and where, it didn't really matter. There wasn't a town bigger than ten thousand people that _wasn't_ bombed, after all.

It had been easier on both of them not to ask – and after a while, he'd just forgotten. Sure, he'd known objectively that he had a dad… but it had been kind of the same way an orphan knew they had parents. And there'd been a lot of orphans in those early years. They'd all learned to live with it.

Except here both Tsuna's mom and his dad were alive and he wasn't an orphan anymore. And he wasn't sure what to think about that – beyond the startling knowledge that aside from the meeting yesterday, he had no recollection of Iemitsu Sawada as a person. He hadn't even remembered what the man looked like.

"Might be one of those coping measures people speak about," he mused and sat up with a sigh.

He hadn't seen that much of Iemitsu the day before. They'd exchanged a couple of words over dinner – mostly about his school which Tsuna had no idea how to answer and had ended up not saying much about at all. And then Iemitsu had headed off, apparently he had business somewhere or something like that.

Tsuna did remember his mother always mentioning how busy his father had been – so, maybe that was it. He wondered what the man did, for a while, but there wasn't really any way to ask without being weird about it. Tsuna had a feeling he was already acting weird enough.

"Just… go to school, try be normal," he muttered and got up to get ready for the day. "One foot in front of the other, Sawada. Here we go."

At least he was getting used to some things. Running water still made him pause for a moment and he still didn't dare to use too much – it still felt such a _waste_ to wash yourself with something so clean. But at least he didn't freak out about it anymore.

As much anyway.

After he was done in the bathroom, and had his school uniform on, Tsuna headed to kitchen. Only his mother was there. "Where is, um," Tsuna paused. "Where's dad?" he settled on asking.

"He went out on a walk," Nana answered, laying his breakfast out for him. "He said he'd be home by the time you came home from school."

"Alright," Tsuna nodded, and sat down to eat. Maybe by then he'd know what he actually felt about the man. Shaking his head, he polished off his breakfast, savouring every bite for as long as he could while he had the time. Then he glanced at his mother.

Nana was humming softly to herself, a smile on her face as she washed the dishes.

"Hey mom?" Tsuna asked and she glanced at her. "Are you happy that he's here?"

"Of course I am!" she said, smiling widely. "I'm very happy!"

Tsuna eyed her carefully and, yes, she really was. "Okay," he said determinedly and stood up. If Iemitsu really made her happy, then for that at least he'd be grateful. The last couple of days Tsuna definitely hadn't made his mom happy, after all. "I'll be heading to school. Should I pick up something from the store on my way back?"

"No, dear it's fine," Nana said and then already turned as he walked over her to hug her. "Ah, my little boy," she said. "It'll be alright soon."

"What will?" Tsuna asked, squeezing her gently and letting himself take a moment to bask in the knowledge that _she was alive and happy_. As confusing as the past was, as confusing as his own family was, at least there was this. His mom, alive and happy.

"Everything will be alright," Nana said happily, and kissed his cheek. "Papa will make sure of it. You'll see."

"… Alright," Tsuna nodded, though he didn't really get it. Maybe it was something he should know, but couldn't remember. It probably didn't matter. "Love you, mom."

"I love you too, honey," Nana laughed and ruffled his hair affectionately. "Now run along – school awaits."

After getting his bag, Tsuna headed out, idly wondering if Kyoko was already at school for boxing club activities, and what Hibari would have in store for him today. Judging by yesterday there might not be fighting today either, maybe Hibari didn't know how to fight with a broken arm or something. Either way, it was probably a good thing. Gave him time to get a new crowbar. Or find the old one.

Though considering that his dad was home… Although his mother hadn't made much noise about the thing, maybe Iemitsu wouldn't either? Well, Tsuna would find out when it happened. Now, where had he seen the crowbar the last time? When he fought with Hibari, obviously – but after that…

Tsuna frowned as a shiver suddenly ran down his spine and the hairs in the back of his neck stood on end.

There was someone out there, watching him.

 

* * *

 

"You stink," Hana greeted Kyoko.

"I don't," Kyoko answered with great dignity. "I just had a _shower._ "

"And used the soap from the dispenser – hence, you stink. Of industrial strength soap," Hana answered flatly and shook her head. "How was boxing with the boys, then?"

"It was…" Kyoko considered it for a moment, wondering how to put it. "It was interesting."

It had been interesting – but also kind of overwhelming. The boxing club wasn't exactly the biggest club in the school, but it had a decent number of members – and all of those members, aside from Kyoko, were boys. And though Kyoko had previously visited their practices to bring Ryohei something he'd forgotten, and she'd gone to see her brother's matches of course, well… they weren't used to having a _girl_ with them.

There'd been a lot of staring, while Ryohei had started walking her through the basic stances and forms.

"Were they being creepy lechers?" Hana asked, folding her arms. "Did you have to punch anyone in the balls?"

"No!" Kyoko laughed. "No one was creepy – everyone was really nice actually." And they had been, really helpful and no one had laughed at her or anything even when she'd messed up. It had been nice. She wasn't sure if it was because of her brother or because of her, but it had still been pretty nice.

She had a slight concern now, that she was about to become the Princess of the Boxing Club, though, but she kept that worry to herself.

"Have you seen Tsuna yet?" Kyoko asked.

"No, but we'll probably know the moment he arrives. Hibari's goons are manning the gates," Hana shrugged, nodding towards the school gates.

"Hmm… Do you think they will be fighting again?" Kyoko asked worriedly, thinking about the talk she'd had with Tsuna the previous day about fighting. Tsuna had kind of seemed like he wanted to fight Hibari again – and oh boy, was that a weird thought. Still, it was probably going to happen at some point and now that she thought about it… he hadn't said _when_.

Surely he wasn't thinking of fighting Hibari _now_ , while Hibari's arm was broken?

"Well, if they do fight, I've got a thousand yen riding on Tsuna," Hana said with a grin and looked at her. "You want in?"

"No, I don't want in on your betting," Kyoko said with a frown. "And you shouldn't be betting on your friends in the first place!"

"Who should I bet on then, on Hibari? That'd be even worse, don't you think?"

 

* * *

 

Kusakabe leaned against the gates, frowning a little at the street outside Namimori Middle School's gates. He had mixed feelings about Sawada Tsunayoshi, and of Hibari's interest in the kid. None of it made much sense.

He'd looked into Sawada, had even done a bit of investigation, and some things didn't add up. Sawada was a wimpy shrimp of a kid who ran away from bullies, did badly in school, and only stood out because of how bad at everything he was. He was clumsy and awkward and kind of embarrassing. Every teacher in the school was in despair over him. He seemed to be wincing in every school photo. The first thing that came to everyone's mind when they thought of Sawada was No-Good Tsuna tripping over his feet.

That kid, and the kid that had crossed weapons with Hibari, were two very different people.

Granted, Tsuna still did badly in school, seemed to forget his homework, he winced away from people and didn't interact with anyone but Sasagawa Kyoko, who seemed to be his best friend, and occasionally Kurokawa Hana who was Sasagawa's friend. Hibari was actually, strangely enough, the person Sawada saw most after those two. So in that sense, the records matched.

But Kusakabe had been watching, and the No-Good Tsuna of before who tripped over his feet was nowhere to be seen. The Sawada of now was a slinky little guy, no doubt about it, but he was also fast, agile and had reflexes that might actually be better than Hibari's. Because for as long as he'd been part of the Disciplinary Committee, Kusakabe had never seen someone fight Hibari like that.

And he'd never seen Hibari beaten.

Something had happened to Sawada, that much was obvious. Something _major_ that had turned a clumsy nobody into a suspicious, cautious fighter capable of breaking bones. And while Hibari probably didn't care too much about the reasons, Kusakabe _did_ care.

There were only so many things that could turn happy kids incapable of hurting anybody into wary brawlers willing – and able to – irreversibly damage their opponents.

Kusakabe was mentally going over the list of possible causes and their warning signs as he spotted Sawada. The kid was tense and a little weird. Kusakabe had noticed that too – the kid didn't have a normal fighting posture, and though what Sawada was doing now wasn't exactly that, it was similar.

Sawada crouched down a little when fighting. Not like he was protecting his belly or anything like that. No, more like he was trying to make a smaller target. He was doing that now too, his knees slightly bent as he walked. He was hair's width from _sneaking_ actually.

"Sawada what the hell are you doing?" Kusakabe asked, figuring that he might as well get straight to it.

"I'm not doing anything?" Sawada answered, but he wasn't even looking at Kusakabe – he was scanning the area around himself, eyes narrowed and wary. "What do you want, uh… what was your name again?"

"It's Kusakabe. Hibari wants to see you before classes."

"Of course he does," Sawada muttered and bowed his head a little, glancing over his shoulder. "Might not be a bad idea actually…"

"You don't have a choice either way. He's in the reception room. Move it," Kusakabe said and motioned through the gates. Sawada hesitated, still looking around himself, before ducking in through the gates like he was running for cover.

Sawada didn't much relax even when they were indoors, the line of his shoulders remaining tense all the way through the school and to the reception room – though that might be because on the way most of the school stopped to stare. Kusakabe could see money changing hands somewhere behind people's backs and narrowed his eyes.

Something to look into later, he decided.

Hibari was stretched out on one of the reception room couches, the arm he had in a cast resting on his stomach. He didn't get up when Sawada entered, but looked up. "Sawada," he said and it was really something how he could look down his nose at someone who was situated higher up than he was.

"Hibari," Sawada answered, looking around and then eying the windows. His eyes narrowed. "You wanted something?"

"I want to fight you," Hibari said simply. "After school."

"Hm," Sawada answered, not even looking at him.

Kusakabe hung back, watching the two as Hibari tried to force his will over Sawada, and Sawada… ignored him? The No-Good was really ignoring the way Hibari was looking at him.

"Someone's looking at me," Sawada then said, voice tense.

"I'm looking at you," Hibari answered through gritted teeth. "And you are being _irritating_."

"Not you. I know what it feels like when you do it – this is somebody else," Sawada said and walked over to the window. There, he stared pulling curtains shut, one after other. He didn't even seem to notice Hibari sitting up, staring at him with a sort of incredulous annoyance.

Once the curtains were all shut, Sawada stood in the shadow of a piece of wall between the windows and pinched the bridge of his nose. Then he turned around to face Hibari. "What did you want again?"

Kusakabe really had to marvel at the kid's gall – or his stupidity. He'd never seen anyone so utterly immune to Hibari, and yet here was this nobody, not feeling anything from Hibari's obvious aggravation. And what was more – it was actually affecting Hibari too. It was probably the first time for Hibari that someone could ignore him like that.

"Someone's following you," Hibari said slowly.

"I think it might be my dad," Sawada said. "I'm not sure though, I can't see him. But he's been following me since I left for school."

"Hm."

Well, that explained… nothing. Kusakabe ran a hand over his face and then frowned. The fact that Sawada's dad was following him, though, that… that _could_ mean something. Especially in light of recent changes – and Sawada's and Hibari's fight. The kid had gone back home bruised black and blue after all. No parent could've missed it.

"Sawada," Kusakabe said, catching the kid's attention. "Do you like your dad?"

"I don't even know him," Sawada shrugged.

What the hell?

"I don't care," Hibari said. "Even if he is following you, I want to fight you after school."

"Well…" Sawada muttered and scratched at his still bruised cheek. "Sure but I kind of don't want to fight where my dad might see. So… can we go somewhere else? Also," he then added, like remembering something. "We need to agree on rules. No more breaking bones."

Hibari's glare got worse at that. When it again had no effect on Sawada, he nodded. "Agreed," he said. "I'll see you here after classes. We'll…" he made a face. "Find another place to fight."

"Great," Sawada said, relaxing a bit. "Alright then."

Kusakabe watched a little incredulously as the kid just turned around and headed off without waiting to be dismissed, just… walking out on Hibari. "That kid makes no sense," he had to say, shaking his head. Maybe there was something wrong with Sawada. Not everything seemed right in his head.

"Hm," Hibari answered, falling back to lay on the couch. "He's a scavenger. They don't play by rules." Then, after a moment. "Don't open the curtains."

 

* * *

 

 

"So? What happened?" Hana asked. "You didn't fight, did you?"

"We're going to fight later," Tsuna answered, rummaging through his backpack for his homework. "After school."

"Where, here?" Hana demanded to know.

"Somewhere else."

"What, like… in the gym?

"Probably not."

"Oh, come on. I've got money riding on this fight – where are you going to fight?" Hana asked, irritated. A lot of people had money riding on it, actually – and she was part of the book keeping. This was important, money-worthy information.

Tsuna shrugged. "I don't know. Somewhere," he said and paused. "Hey, you were there when we fought last time, right? Did you see where my crowbar went?"

"Your crowbar? Oh, yeah, I've got it, I put it in the –" Hana started to say and then stopped, an idea coming to her head. "Oh, I know," she said slowly, grinning at Tsuna. "How about I'll give it to you when you fight Hibari? You just need to let me come along, and you'll get it."

Tsuna just stared at her for a moment. Then he shrugged. "Alright, whatever. So long as I get my crowbar," he said and then looked at Kyoko. "How about you – are you coming?"

"I have boxing practice," Kyoko said nervously, looking between Tsuna and Hana. "Um… do you think it's wise fighting Hibari now? He's got a broken arm, and you're injured too."

"He asked me, so I guess it's what he wants. And I," Tsuna paused, thinking about something that made him frown, "I could use the distraction, I guess."

Hana and Kyoko shared a look, and Kyoko shrugged awkwardly. Well, Hana didn't really care. As insane as it was, the whole Hibari-vs-Tsuna thing that was happening was just about the most interesting – and profitable – thing happening at school right now. And now she'd get front row seats to the rematch.

Although considering that most of the school wanted to _see_ the two fight…

"Are you sure you can't fight in the gym?" Hana asked Tsuna. "You're disappointing all your fans you know."

"… I have fans?"


	9. Chapter 9

Hibari waited in the reception room alone after having chased Kusakabe and the rest away. The painkillers had stopped affecting him an hour or so ago and the arm was starting to bother him and he had no patience for crowding – and probably wouldn't until it was time for another dose, which wouldn't be for another hour.

Broken bones were infuriating. As much as he hated the idea of fighting softly, he could see where Sawada was coming from with his insipid little rule. Hibari even though he'd try and go along with it. Maybe.

One thing was definitely certain – he was _not_ getting a broken arm again.

Yawning, he rested his good arm on top of his forehead for a moment before glancing at the clock. There was still time before Sawada's classes ended for the day. He could have a catnap before the scavenger was slated to arrive.

He didn't managed to fall asleep in the end and the failure to doze off – and the ongoing throbbing of his arm, was only irritating him further. So when the door to the reception room finally opened and Sawada arrived, Hibari almost hurtled a pillow at him. Worse yet, Sawada wasn't alone. He had a girl with him.

"Sawada," Hibari growled, sitting up.

"Hibari," the scavenger answered, and completely ignored the glare Hibari sent at the girl. There was a long moment of silence while the girl not so surreptitiously stepped to stand behind Sawada, ridiculously taking cover behind the much shorter and scrawnier boy. Sawada, aside from tensing subtly at having someone behind him, didn't seem to mind. "You ready to go?"

Hibari almost, _almost_ wanted to tell him to piss off, that they could fight right there and then – but chances were that if he tried that, Sawada would just run off. As it was, he was interested about this supposed stalker – Sawada's _father_ even – and how Sawada was so aware of his observation. And, more importantly, how was Sawada planning to shake him if he was still following him.

"Where are we going?" Hibari asked, standing up and grabbing his tonfa from the coffee table.

Sawada arched an eyebrow. "You don't have a place?"

"It's you who has a problem with fighting in the school, remember?"

Sawada conceded that point with a slight shrug and then considered it for a moment. "Well there's a lot of places we can go to," he said thoughtfully. "Getting there is another thing. There's the fast way and then there's the long way, which might take us a couple of hours…"

"The fast way," Hibari said, glaring at him. "I'm not wasting any more time with this than I have to."

"Hm," Sawada nodded and glanced at the girl behind him. "We're gonna be running a lot. Can you keep up?"

"I used to run track," the girl answered. She had Sawada's crowbar in hand and was resting it idly against her shoulder, watching him with an unimpressed look on her face. "Where are we going?"

"I'll tell you when we get there," Sawada said and turned to leave. "I hope you two have good shoes."

Hibari blinked at that and glanced down at his feet before being able to stop himself – and could see the girl doing the same. Sawada, ignoring the glares they both aimed his way, and just walked out of the room, leaving them to follow.

"Herbivore," Hibari greeted the girl.

"It's pronounced Kurokawa, actually," the girl answered, tilting her head. "It's kind of funny. You're not nearly as scary when Tsuna's around, huh?"

Hibari narrowed his eyes and lifted his tonfa at her, and she quickly backed away from the room, and he could hear her _laughing_ a little. Sawada's influence on her was, it seemed, fairly firm. Hibari really needed to crush the stupid scavenger. As interesting as he was, Sawada was spreading his lack of social graces around and if it went on for too long it would interfere with the peace and tranquillity of Namimori Middle School's atmosphere.

Sawada led them not to the front of the school – but to the back, past the gym and the baseball field. There he stopped to tie up his shoe laces a little tighter and to look around, eyes narrowed and gleaming in the sunlight. "How is he moving this fast?" he muttered more to himself than to either Hibari or Kurokawa – before shaking his head and turning to them. "Ready?"

"Let's just get going," Hibari grunted. "We're wasting time."

"Yeah, I have places to be," Kurokawa added.

Sawada's expression was utterly unimpressed. "Remember – you two asked for this," he said. And then he took off at his usual dead run.

Keeping up with Sawada was interesting for about ten seconds – then he was suddenly scaling a fence across the street. Hibari stared, both incredulous and fascinated, how Sawada took the chain link fence at a dash, jumping up and _climbing_ the fence still at his running pace before smoothly vaulting over it and landing in a smooth forward roll to dampen the shock of the fall.

Kurokawa let out a disbelieving breath. "Tsuna, what the _hell_?"

"Keep up," was all Sawada said.

"Oh for –" Kurokawa muttered and then jumped at the fence, climbing it much more slowly and awkwardly. "You – bastard – take this, I can't climb with this thing!" she said and then threw the crowbar she was holding at Sawada – who caught it easily and smoothly shoved it into his book bag.

Hibari narrowed his eyes before quickly shoving his tonfa under his belt to hang at his waist. Then he took the fence at a run.

This whole thing would be a little more interesting than he thought it would, it seemed. A whole lot less dignified… but interesting.

The fence was just the start. Sawada was giving them a lot of slack, Hibari could feel it – after a while he slowed his own pace to a casual jog so that they could keep up with him through the hurdles of jumping over fences and other obstacles and running down stairs – which he tended to do in a single leap usually assisted only by a brief grip on a fence or kick off a wall in mid leap. There was a smooth agility to Sawada's movements – he fumbled occasionally and Hibari could see him cutting his palm open on a sharp ledge somewhere along the way, but that didn't slow Sawada in the slightest as he _tumbled_ his way through the neighbourhood.

Then they were suddenly in the old part of Namimori, which was full of abandoned warehouses and buildings and rubble. There, the obstacle course their town had suddenly turned into was cranked up a notch. Suddenly it wasn't just fences they were scaling, but walls, some of them more intact than others. Sawada lead them through a maze of a long since abandoned building project, winding through its mostly crumbled scaffolding and half-finished walls, jumping over them, or under them, sometimes using piles as hand holds for quick twists and turns, turning a perfectly straight-forward building into a maze of obstacles.

Somehow, they ended up coming out of the building the exact same way they entered it.

By the time Sawada finally stopped – inside an abandoned, mouldy apartment building – Kurokawa was gasping for breath and Hibari had completely forgotten that his arm was hurting. Sawada was out of breath, too, as he crouched down behind a wall, eyes gleaming in the shadow as he looked over his shoulder, waiting.

"Lost him," he muttered, and smiled in satisfaction.

"You're a freaking _nutcase_ ," Kurokawa gasped, falling to her knees and trying to calm her breathing down. She wiped a hand over her sweaty brow. "Where did you learn how to _do_ that?"

"Here mostly," Sawada shrugged and looked at his bleeding hand. "I mean, it's nothing special, just getting around things fast." Shrugging, he picked at the wound a little, checking it to see if antthing had gotten stuck in it.

Hibari watched him for a moment and then tugged a handkerchief he used for cleaning his tonfa out of his pocket, throwing it Sawada's way. The scavenger took it with a nod, and wrapped it around his hand tightly. "That," Hibari said slowly, glancing outside. "Was interesting."

Sawada shrugged. "It's just running around," he said.

"Free running," Kurokawa said, still breathing a little hard. "Pretty sure that's what it's called. Ow, my side stings…"

"Well," Sawada said and shrugged again. Then he took out his crowbar, turning it idly in his hand and looking at Hibari. "No breaking bones," he said.

"Or irreparable damage," Hibari agreed, taking one of his tonfa in his good hand, and swinging it in his hand slightly. His palm was tingling after all the climbing and vaulting, but at least he was suitably warmed up.

"Can you also not knock each other unconscious?" Kurokawa asked as she quickly backed to the corner. "I don't want to have to drag you two – or either of you – out of here. It's a long way."

Hibari stared at Sawada, taking a better position. His heart was pounding now, and not just because of the previous exercise. Sawada seemed to be the same, his eyes practically glowing as he grasped the crowbar in both hands, the bend aimed at Hibari. "Agreed," they said together.

But before they could really even _start_ they were interrupted.

"Well, well, well. What have we here?"

 

* * *

 

"What do you _mean_ you lost him?"

"I mean I _lost him_ ," Iemitsu snapped into the phone, looking around wildly. He'd been following Tsuna and his – his what, friends, accomplices, _masters_? – around the town for a while until they'd taken a turn into the old part of town and then, somewhere along the way, they'd just vanished somewhere, leaving Iemitsu following a trail that ended somewhere behind him. "He was, I don't even know what he was doing, running around like mad, taking these weird turns and jumping over things, it was like he was –"

"Trying to shake a tail, maybe?" Lal Mirch asked, not _quite_ amused.

"He couldn't have known I was tailing him – I was way to the back, no way he saw me," Iemitsu said, running a hand over his hair and glaring at the surrounding neighbourhood. He might've not been the expert on Namimori he used to be, but he was pretty sure this wasn't exactly a good part of town. They never were in any cities, these sort of places. No, this was where the homeless lived and the gangs roamed freely.

Why here?

"I've been looking over the images and scans you sent," Lal Mirch said and he could hear her tapping away at a keyboard. "I'm pretty sure Tsunayoshi is using Flames to empower his senses. His sight at least."

Iemitsu frowned. "What?"

"I can't be sure with images like these – I'd need to get a proper look close up – but that gleam he has going on, I know it pretty well," she answered with an almost audible shrug. "It's a technique I use myself. If used right, it can give you pretty damn good long distance vision, never mind much more detailed peripheral vision. Doubled with the Vongola Hyper Intuition, there can't be much he misses, if he's using it constantly like it looks like he is."

"Tsuna doesn't know how to use Flames – he _can't_ use Flames, he's –"

"It might be that he doesn't know what he's doing – that he's doing it instinctively, subconsciously," Lal Mirch answered brutally, ignoring the argument. "It wouldn't be the first time – and your family has strong Flames. For someone like you, it might actually be a little harder to _not_ use Flames than to end up using them somehow, whether you know it or not."

"Or it might be that someone's gotten into his head and _they're_ using his Flames," Iemitsu grumbled.

"Well, I can't say much about that," she answered. "You've got to wait until the others get there. And you really should've slapped a tracker on your kid, too."

"Yeah, I should've," Iemitsu admitted, and scanned the scenery for a moment for _any_ glimpse of Tsuna and the two he'd been with. "You got anything on the other two kids yet?"

"His school mates – Hibari Kouya from year above his, and Kurokawa Hana, his classmate," Lal Mirch answered. "Both come up pretty clean – Hibari has some misdemeanours on his record, some squabbles and fights but nothing too alarming. He runs the Disciplinary Committee in Tsunayoshi's school now, looks like," she trailed off. "No known affiliation with the underworld as far as I can find – both families come up clean."

"Hmm," Iemitsu said. "So it's either something new, or they're being controlled too."

"Or you're making a mountain out of an ant hill. Either way, there's not much I can do for you on my end," she answered. "Find your kid and slap a tracker on him. Call me once Croquant and the others arrive and you have a proper scan on the kid."

"Yeah," Iemitsu said and sighed. "Keep looking into it, though, alright? If there's someone out there, I want to know how the hell they even found Tsuna."

"On it," Lal Mirch said and hung up on him.

Arcobaleno – all of them were so abrupt.

Sighing, Iemitsu checked the clock on his phone screen before shoving it into his pocket. A cCouple more hours before the others arrived. Not much he could do about that. Right now, the more important thing was to find where Tsuna had gone.

He'd worry about Tsuna possibly using his Flames actively, if subconsciously, once he actually found his boy.

 

* * *

 

Hana felt a little like throwing up her hands. This whole thing hadn't gone anything like she thought it would. When Tsuna had told her that he and Hibari would be fighting _somewhere_ she'd assumed they just hadn't decided which gym to use, or that they were going to some weird dojo maybe or something. Instead they'd ended up running around the town like idiots and now this – this… whatever this even was.

"What do you want?" Hibari asked, sounding irritated.

"I think that's our line," said one of the – what, thugs? – that had walked in on them. There was eight of them, and they all looked rough in their hoodies and faded jeans and whatnot – a few of them were holding metal pipes of all things. Though, considering that Tsuna was holding a crowbar…

"You're on our turf, brats," another thug, one with a nose piercing and a tattoo on his chin, said, pointing his bent up pipe at Hibari. "Running around and playing like you own the place, what the hell? Our turf is no place for little kids, you know."

"Hey, bro – look, look," another said, nudging at the first. He was looking at Hana. "They brought a _girl_ with them. A pretty one too!"

"Oh – ohh, so that's what you are doing here," the first thug said. "You brought over your own entertainment to have a little fun with?" he asked and grinned widely. "Aww, that's cute, baby's first bodily assault. You don't mind if we take her off your hands, right? I mean. I don't care if you do mind, but it never hurts ask, right?"

"Ex _cuse_ me?" Hana asked, outraged. "What are you – I'm nobody's entertainment!"

"This is annoying," Hibari said under his breath, his knuckles white on his tonfa. Tsuna just stared at the thugs, his whole body tense.

The lead thug grinned and then turned to saunter over to Hana. "Get rid of the little babies, boys," he said and reached out a hand to her. "I'm going to have myself a little bit of –"

Hana wasn't particularly interested what he thought he was going to have himself a little bit of – instead she gave him a lot of _kick_ in the _nuts_. As she did, Tsuna and Hibari both launched into movement and if the fight in the school yard had been bad, this was something else.

While the lead thug fell down under Hana's second kick, the first tug Tsuna tangled was taken out _instantly_ – by a crowbar swung heavily and wildly right at his temple. Hibari wasted no time either, cracking his tonfa up and against the chin of his first opponent, sending him crashing into a guy behind him. Then Tsuna was at another guy and there was a loud crack of something breaking as he swung his crowbar against the guy's arm which the thug had lifted to try and protect his face – the cry of pain that followed was startling and loud. And in the meantime Hibari was facing yet another opponent, dealing sharp, fast hits with his tonfa.

It was Tsuna that was the worse of the two, Hana decided, watching the two of them. Hibari was brutal, yes, and he definitely didn't hesitate one bit. But Tsuna was _merciless_ and when he attacked, he dealt some real and serious damage – while Hibari lavishly dealt out bruises for anyone who dared to cross him, Tsuna broke bones left, right, and centre, without any restraint.

Watching them, Hana realised that maybe she didn't have any idea what she'd gotten involved with after all. This wasn't just a fun fight to watch, this wasn't, well, entertainment. This was something serious and… and horrible. Was this why Kyoko had joined the boxing club – because she'd seen this and realised, like Hana was realising now, that there was something deadly serious about it?

The last two thugs ran away before Tsuna and Hibari could reach them and they left behind a pile of bodies. Tsuna's opponents were all mostly unconscious – or maybe even _dead_ – while Hibari's opponents were nursing bruises and bleeding noses, trying to crawl away. Hibari, after seeing the damage Tsuna had done, finished them off with sharp swings to their necks, making them crumple down to the floor, out cold.

Both the boys were breathing hard, and there was a desperate look in Tsuna's eyes Hana didn't much like. Hibari didn't seem to like it either and when Tsuna turned to face him, his eyes wild and raw somehow, Hibari actually took a step back, lifting his tonfa in defence.

"Calm down," the Demon of the Disciplinary Committee said. "It's over – they're down."

Tsuna blinked at him, his face frantic and somehow hard. Then, shaking a little, he began to ease up, the dangerous tension on his shoulders loosening. He released a breath, and Hibari lowered his hand a little. Tsuna swallowed and glanced at Hana. "You alright?"

"No," Hana answered, incredulous. "I'm not alright! Not one _bit_!"

"Oh," he said, his voice small and confused. "Sorry," he said then, shaking his head, he turned to the thugs…

And crouched down to rummage through their pockets.

Hana stared at him wide eyed and disbelieving and then met Hibari's eyes over Tsuna's back. Hibari scowled at her and then pinched the bridge of his nose a little, grunting in annoyance. "My arm hurts," he grumbled and turned to walk out of the mould stinking room.

Hana looked after him, then at Tsuna who was _pickpocketing_ the unconscious thugs. "What the hell am I doing here?" she asked no one in particular, and then, hesitantly, turned to follow Hibari out of the room. Maybe some clean air would clear her head and she'd know what the hell was even happening.

She didn't make it far before there was a flash of golden light in her face – the last thing she saw was Hibari's unconscious form on the broken asphalt outside before everything faded away.


	10. Chapter 10

Iemitsu paced restlessly across the dust stained floor. In a long line right there lay nine unconscious people in various stages of injury. Six beaten, bruised, and bloody men in their early twenties, typical thugs you could find in practically any city. And then there were three younger figures – a black haired boy with his arm in a cast, a wavy haired girl, and of course… Iemitsu's own son.

It was _not_ what Iemitsu had been planning from his stake out. It was not what he'd imagined. And it didn't make _sense_.

Why had Tsuna run here? Why fight these six nobodies? And they were really nobodies with minor criminal records on their conscience, not a single one of them in any way important. So why? Had it been an accident? And even if it had been an accident, since _when_ could Tsuna even fight? Because fight he had – and ferociously too.

Iemitsu glanced at the crowbar he'd set aside along with the pipes and the black haired boy's tonfa, and then away again.

It made no damn sense. There were no Flames here, he couldn't sense anything coming off _anyone here_. Not even Tsuna, he couldn't sense any sort of manipulation, nor could he sense the supposed subconscious Flame usage Lal Mirch suspected. No, it felt like these kids – the thugs included – were nothing more than your usual normal people, nothing abnormal and nothing special about it. Except for the fact that they'd fought. And Tsuna had almost _killed_ a number of them by bashing them in the head with a god damned crowbar.

Pacing back and forth a few more times, Iemitsu stopped at Tsuna's side and crouched down. His kid looked restless even under the influence of Iemitsu's own Flames – there was a furrow between his brows which was permanent, judging by the looks of things. The bruises on his face, the shadows under his eyes – he looked… weary. And wary too, even in unconsciousness.

It had _nothing_ on how Tsuna had looked that split of a second before Iemitsu had managed to get close enough to knock him out. The last time Iemitsu had seen someone looking so wild, it had been after a blood bath.

It made _no sense_.

He was risen from his contemplation by the sound of a car driving close to the building and stopping. Rising, Iemitsu walked over to the nearest opening on the mould stained walls, and sighed softly as he recognised the Flames of the people approaching. While Croquant's Flames were too subtle to be easily detected, Oregano's weren't quite so subtle – and Basil Iemitsu would've recognised anywhere. There was someone else there too, though, and it took seeing him for Iemitsu to recognise him.

"Here," Iemitsu called for them in Italian. "Jump in through the window – the door's too rotted."

"Great," Oregano muttered and jumped over the low window sill, making a face at the smell as she landed. "Lovely place you have here, sir," she greeted him and adjusted her glasses in the shade of the abandoned house.

"Don't sass me," Iemitsu answered.

"Master," Basil said brightly as he jumped in too. "I hope young master Tsunayoshi is alright?"

"I knocked him out," Iemitsu answered. Had to – Tsuna had been about to bash him on the head with his crowbar too. "Croquant –"

"Show him to me," the dark skinned Guardian said calmly and Iemitsu motioned to the larger room in the back where he'd put everyone. As the Guardian silently slipped past him, Iemitsu turned to the last member of the group, the one he hadn't expected. "Reborn," he said warily. "I didn't expect you here."

"Iemitsu," the Arcobaleno answered, jumping down from the windowsill, his landing barely making a sound. Whether it was because of how good he was or how _small_ he was Iemitsu was never sure. "The Ninth sent me."

"That I got," Iemitsu said, narrowing his eyes. "Why?"

"Because it's a family matter," Reborn said, shrugging his small shoulders. "Why else?"

Iemitsu scowled after him as the Arcobaleno sauntered – or what passed for a saunter for someone so small – after Croquant. Well, Iemitsu thought to himself, grimacing slightly. It was to be expected, in the end. Tsuna was in the line of succession, after all. The threat of having one of Timoteo's heirs, even one so distant, tampered with was no small matter.

The fact that the Ninth had sent _Reborn_ though…

Squeezing his hands into fists, Iemitsu followed the others into the room where Tsuna, his two… partners, and the six thugs lay. Croquant was already crouched by Tsuna's side, one large hand over Tsuna's restless face, fingers pressed against Tsuna's forehead.

"What happened here, sir?" Oregano asked, looking at the line of bodies.

"A scuffle, by the looks of it," Reborn said, looking from one form to another thoughtfully. Then he glanced at the pile of weapons. "Tsunayoshi uses a crowbar?" he asked and Iemitsu didn't even try to come up with an explanation as to how he figured _that_ out. "That's a little uncivilised for someone supposedly so peaceful."

"What are you insinuating?" Iemitsu asked.

"Just making an observation," Reborn answered, looking away.

"Who fought whom here, Master?" Basil asked curiously, looking between the thugs and the Namimori students. "Why?"

"I don't have a clue," Iemitsu admitted. "I think it might've been an accident – Tsuna and his… friends ran into these six and they had an altercation." He shook his head and then looked towards Croquant. "Anything?"

"Hmm," the Mist Guardian answered, eyes shut. "I can't sense the Flames of Mist on him," he admitted and opened his eyes, looking down at Tsuna thoughtfully. "But his is a very restless mind. You used your Flames on him, yes?"

"Yeah. What about it?"

"He's dreaming."

Iemitsu blinked at that and then quickly stepped forward to look. Tsuna's eyes were moving under his eyelids and he was biting his lips. "He's supposed to be _unconscious,_ " he muttered and crouched down. "Not sleeping."

"Well. Perhaps dreaming is the wrong word," Croquant answered and glanced at him. "It is rather that his mind is awake – and somewhere else."

"Meaning?" Iemitsu asked, irritated. This was his son they were talking about, his son's mind, and he didn't have the patience for riddles.

"A vision maybe?" Reborn asked, stepping closer and peering at Tsuna coolly. "Something someone put in his mind? The illusion he's under."

"I cannot sense the Flames of Mist on him," Croquant repeated slowly, looking at Tsuna's face and running his hand over Tsuna's forehead again. "There is nothing but Sky in this child. No, he is not seeing a vision. He is having a flashback."

"What – like a movie flashback?" Iemitsu asked with disbelief.

"No," Croquant answered, somehow both amused and utterly unimpressed with him all at once. "Like the psychological phenomenon. Involuntary recurrent memory, Mr. Sawada."

"… Like in PTSD?" Iemitsu asked.

"That I cannot tell – the intricacies of the mind and whatever damage one might've experienced aren't quite so obvious even to one with the Flames of Mist," Croquant shrugged. "If he has such a disorder, I'd recommend a psychiatrist to diagnose it, rather than a Flame user. But I can confirm that it is a memory he is seeing. What memory, that I cannot tell. But as far as his reaction goes…" he pressed a gentle finger on the furrow between Tsuna's brow. "I wouldn't call it a happy one."

Iemitsu leaned back, thinking back to the way Tsuna had looked at him before – like he hadn't really recognised him. Tsuna had been having a flashback before – before Iemitsu had even reached him?

"Something the scuffle they had triggered?" Reborn asked curiously and glanced at Iemitsu. "As far as we know, your son hasn't any history with violence. Or violent experiences."

Iemitsu swallowed. "As far as we know," he admitted. "Tsuna should be… happy, and living a peaceful life. This isn't normal for him, none of this is normal."

"Then maybe whatever he's seeing isn't either," Reborn shrugged. "There are other ways to manipulate people than by using illusions. Good old-fashioned torture can go a long way too. With a blend of physical and psychological torture and indoctrination…"

"Shit," Iemitsu muttered, running a shaking hand over his forehead. And with Tsuna being so bruised and beaten up, it was hard to tell if he had any older injuries. Covering his mouth with his hand to keep himself from _screaming_ , Iemitsu took a deep breath. "Croquant," he then said. "I want to see what he's seeing."

The Mist Guardian looked at him coolly for a moment. "That technique is not very kind," he then said quietly.

"I need to know." Iemitsu said and then glanced at Reborn, whose face was as blank and unreadable as it always was. He had no illusions about why Reborn was here.

He was there to kill Iemitsu's son.

Tsuna was in the line of succession – not the first in line, maybe, but if something happened and it came down to it, Tsuna might stand to inherit the entirety of the Vongola family. That made him incredibly valuable to Vongola's enemies. If someone had managed to brainwash Tsuna and it proved a risk to the family…

"We need to know," Iemitsu said, and by will alone managed to keep his Flames in check. "Show us what he's seeing."

Croquant looked at him expressionlessly for a moment before sighing and turning to Tsuna. "This will take some time," he said and gently grasped Tsuna's face in both hands, pressing his thumbs against Tsuna's forehead.

 

* * *

 

Hana lay frozen, staring through barely open eyes as the black man did… _something_ to Tsuna. She had no idea what, but it didn't look good – it didn't look _normal_.

She could see wisps of _something_ rising from Tsuna's forehead, flickering light blue light that curled in the air and through which she could see… things. They were like shreds of photographs that popped in and out of existence. A grey sky spotted with dark clouds. A ruined street, covered in rusting shells of cars. Houses that looked like they'd gone through a war.

As she watched, the shreds grew larger and more stable, joining together to form a slowly materialising picture – only, it moved and it was alive and in a full three dimensions, like… like…

Hana had no idea what it was like, but it looked real – and it was slowly growing around Tsuna, pulled into existence from his _head_. Slowly, bit by bit, it spread and took over the wall behind Tsuna and then floor under him, spreading out to cover the entire room until the whole room was gone.

Suddenly Hana was lying on a ruined street, with ruins of a vaguely familiar neighbourhood around her. There wasn't a single whole house around her, however – every building was wrecked and it looked like a fire had run rampant through the whole place, only it had happened years and years ago. It was like something out of a war movie, only worse – because she recognised the place now. There was a faded sign she could recognise from anywhere – it was the bookstore she visited often, the one down on Sixth Street in downtown Namimori.

The _people_ from the room before faded away – the black man faded away too – and suddenly there was only Tsuna, lying alone on the asphalt. A deep, distant voice murmured something in a language Hana didn't understand – but having heard Tsuna speak it, she was pretty damn sure it was Italian.

Suddenly, Tsuna groaned and opened his eyes, turning onto his side and struggling to get up – except it wasn't Tsuna, not the Tsuna Hana knew. This was someone much older, and so much worse off. Thin and tall and _emaciated_ , he looked like a man on the brink of starvation, with hollow cheeks and shadows under his eyes, his hair beyond messy and a hint of a scraggly beard on his thin, pale cheeks. He was dressed in a lot of layers, with a worn scarf around his neck and frayed, fingerless gloves on his hands.

He had blood on his lips, and one of his hands came to twist the fabric of his shirt in front of his belly. He was bleeding there, dark red blood staining the dirty jumper he had under the coat.

"There he is – fucking get him!" a male voice shouted and with a hiss Tsuna pushed to his feet and stumbled into a loping, painful looking run - except, he didn't move at all. The world moved around him, flowing over Hana's form and Tsuna ran in place in the middle of it, with the scenery twisting and turning as he did so.

There was a sound Hana had only heard from movies, and Tsuna dived for the cover of a broken wall as bullets suddenly rained his way, shot from the machine gun carried by a man in a white uniform of some kind.

"Come out, you rat, don't think we don't see you!" the man shouted, and fired at Tsuna's cover again. "That was important shit you stole and you are sure as hell not getting away with it!""

Tsuna, his back pressed against the cover, gasped for breath and very briefly lifted his jumper hem, checking the wound. Hana had no idea whether it was a bullet wound, or a knife wound, or what, but it was bleeding a lot. Tsuna hissed something under his breath – _shit_ – and then leaned his head back against the wall for a moment, taking a deep breath.

"You want it?" Tsuna shouted, taking something from under his long coat. "You can come and get it."

"You bet your fucking ass I'm coming to get it," the man in the white uniform said, machine gun held at the ready as he approached Tsuna's cover warily. "Not so sprightly now, are you, you little fuck?"

The moment the guy peered around Tsuna's cover, Tsuna moved, making a wild throwing motion. It was over and done so fast that Hana didn't see the knife before it was already imbedded in the uniformed guy's throat. The man gurgled under his mask, feebly batting at the knife before stumbling where he stood and falling to his knees. Tsuna moved then, stumbling from behind the cover to try and grab the guy's machine gun – only to dive hurriedly back again as more gunshots rang out – and more men in white uniforms ran in.

"We see you, asshole! Don't you fucking move!" they shouted.

"Yeah, yeah, nice of you to be so observant," Tsuna grumbled to himself, grimacing in pain and checking his pockets for something – more weapons maybe. The disappointment was clearly visible but very brief on his thin face, before he quickly looked around for something.

He grabbed a couple of rocks from nearby, resting one in his lap and grasping other in his right hand, testing the weight of it. Then he closed his eyes, and listened for a moment.

"You alive there, you bastard?" one of the men jeered. "We got you good this time, didn't we? Bet you're feeling real smart now about trying to steal from the Mi –"

Tsuna twisted and got up to his knees and threw the rock, nailing the guy right on the forehead. The man must've squeezed the trigger of his gun as he fell because there was a wild spray of fire, which made the other men with him duck for cover. Tsuna threw the other rock as well and in the confusion, dashed for the man he'd killed and grabbed the machine gun from his side.

He aimed, fired and killed all of his pursuers in one smooth motion, his eyes shining almost golden over the dark barrel of the machine gun.

The silence that followed was almost oppressive as Tsuna stood there, the machine gun still at the ready as he listened. There was a rumbling sound in the distance – an engine, a vehicle… a car? No, Hana realised as something in the distance fell over and she saw the gun barrel. Not a car.

A tank.

"Oh, give me a break," Tsuna breathed and threw the machine gun away – and then, just as the tank's turret began to turn his way, he dashed off at his awkward, painful run, squeezing his hand over the wound in his stomach. The tank was left behind and out of view as he turned and tried to get away, and Hana could only head the sound of it firing and not see it. It was incredibly loud and so powerful that it seemed to shake the whole world.

Or the illusion, whatever the whole thing actually was.

"If I make out of this," Tsuna grunted to himself as he ran, spitting blood with each word. "I am never, ever, _ever_ doing something like that again. Really not worth it.

He ran and ran, the tank slowly being left behind as he made his way through the city, twisting and turning and weaving through the rubble the same way he had when he'd been running with Hana and Hibari – except, this Tsuna was slower and clumsier, probably because of the wound. He wasn't slowing down much – not aside from the occasional stops he took to listen before he decided which way to go.

When he eventually dared to stop in the ruins of what looked like a warehouse, Hana couldn't hear the tank anymore. Tsuna took cover in some old metal crates, tense and wary for a long, long while before he finally allowed himself to relax, falling slowly to sit on the dirty floor, his back against the metal crate.

"Not worth it," he muttered, his eyes falling shut and blood trickling through his lips.

And the world shattered around him and suddenly Hana was back in the mouldy abandoned apartment and Tsuna was young and beardless and dressed in his school uniform – and the strange people were all staring at him in confusion and horror.

"What the hell was that?" the blonde man muttered in Japanese and then said something in Italian to the black man who was frowning at Tsuna. Hana couldn't understand him, but it sounded like he was demanding an explanation. Beside Tsuna, the weird child was biting his lip in concentration – and Hana quickly shut her eyes as he turned in her direction.

Because of that she didn't see Tsuna wake up – but she did hear it.

 

* * *

 

Tsuna gasped his way to wakefulness, grasping at his stomach with a numb hand. He expected to find it covered in blood like it had been before – but instead his fingers met only the unblemished, dry fabric. There was no familiar tackiness of drying blood there, just smooth, new fabric. He was wearing a sweater vest – why was he wearing a –? No it didn't matter. There were people around him and he didn't know them – and he'd been _unconscious_ –

He tried to move, to get away, to _fight_ if he had to, but his body refused to answer him and he could only barely turn onto his side, twisting away from the dark skinned man beside him. There he came face to face with a small figure in an even a smaller suit, with a black fedora and something vaguely familiar around his neck.

Tsuna's mind was hazy, images flickering in and out, but he knew that pacifier, he'd seen it somewhere before – yes, the girl had had one too. The floating girl. The one who'd given him back the peaceful past.

"Hey," Tsuna muttered, reaching feebly for the yellow pacifier. "Are you here… to take me back?" he whispered sadly. "Please don't. I don't want to go back. I like it here much better."

The child looked at him inscrutably and didn't answer.


	11. Chapter 11

Reborn had seen young Tsunayoshi's records – he'd gotten it from the CEDEF when the Ninth had ordered him to accompany Croquant to Japan. It hadn't been anything impressive – not even from a son of Iemitsu, who granted wasn't always the fastest bullet in the clip. Tsunayoshi's records had painted the boy as a happy-go-lucky fool with no care in the world, and no serious determination of any kind.

Like somebody utterly inconsequential and absolutely innocent.

Reborn grabbed the shaking fingers reaching for his pacifier and then looked up to the others who, in turn, were staring at him – Iemitsu the hardest. "Reborn," the head of the CEDEF growled. "Care to explain?"

"Don't be an idiot," Reborn answered and turned to the kid again. Tsunayoshi's eyes were bleary and hazy and judging by the looks of it he wasn't all there yet. Too much Mist in your head did that. "It's not me he recognises – it's the pacifier," he said. "He's met an Arcobaleno."

Ignoring the others, Reborn sat down beside the kid, feet crossed in his lap. "Tsunayoshi," he said directly to the still mostly stunned boy. "Tell me about the person with a pacifier – the one like mine," he asked, switching to Japanese. "Who were they?"

The boy struggled a little against the grasp Reborn had on his fingers, but gave up – whether it was due to the conflicting Flames inside his body making it hard for him to move, or the strength of Reborn's grip, the Arcobaleno wasn't sure. Still, the kid was hazy enough right now that interrogation would be easy.

"I don't know. She was floating," Tsunayoshi finally said, his voice a little slurred. "And she stopped time. I don't…"

Female and floating – interesting. And worrisome. Reborn nodded slowly, filing the information away. "What did she do to you?"

"She sent me here," Tsunayoshi mumbled in answer, still staring at Reborn's pacifier.

"Why did she sent you here?"

That took the kid a moment, and while he tried to either remember or just understand the question, the CEDEF shifted around Reborn restlessly – Iemitsu walking forward. Reborn held him back with a brief glare – the kid was in an easily interrogated mindset right now, no way was Iemitsu ruining that for them.

"Someone had to bare the burden," Tsunayoshi finally said, shaking his head. "And I was, another me – I don't… I don't understand…" he curled into himself a little, his knees coming up, his body shaking. "I don't want to go _back_ there."

"You won't have to, Tsuna, I -!" Iemitsu started and stopped when Reborn glared at him, lifting his free hand to Leon. The chameleon slowly climbed onto his hand but didn't shift – he didn't need to, the threat of it was enough and Iemitsu begrudgingly shut up.

Tsunayoshi, if he noticed any of it, didn't seem to care much – his eyes were still on the pacifier. Reborn felt a bit like a snake charmer with the kid so enthralled, but whatever – it worked. As long as any idiots didn't step in to ruin it.

"Tsunayoshi," Reborn said to catch the kid's attention from whatever was in his head. "What is the burden you're bearing?"

"… Knowing."

"The hell is that supposed to mean," Iemitsu muttered in the back, but quietly and keeping his distance. Reborn, however, had an inkling he might know, now.

Unlike most people there – unlike even Croquant, the Ninth Vongola Boss's Mist Guardian – Reborn had seen the full effect of drawing memories out with Mist. Viper had liked that technique quite a bit early on – it had been their preferred interrogation method when they'd still been working together. It was far more reliable, after all, to look at people's memories than what people actually said. And Reborn could still remember how Viper had explained it – the true benefits of the techniques.

One of them was that you couldn't really circumvent it.

Faking memories was easy for a Mist user, implanting them in targets mind was a piece of cake – but that only worked so far for most people. If a mist user went and pulled the memories out, like Croquant had with Tsunayoshi, the counterfeit memories were _always_ blindly obvious. The way people constructed memories was always different, after all – people's minds were different. Trying to fix up someone else's memories from the outside left visible patches and blurring and inconsistencies in the actual memory.

There had been nothing like that in Tsunayoshi's memories. It had been smooth and clean, only faded with time where small details were concerned – but still a million times sharper than most people's. That would be the use of Flames to enhance his senses, which the kid was trying to do even _now_ , and which he'd done constantly in the memory. But the fact remained – as far as Reborn's experience with these things went, and it went pretty _far_ …

The memory hadn't been fake.

Someone had to bear the burden, Tsunayoshi said. The burden of knowing. Knowing what?

Reborn considered what he'd seen in the memory and looked at the kid. "Were you shot? When you were running away from the men with white uniforms, were you shot? What was that wound?" he asked thoughtfully.

"Bullet grazed me – it didn't go in," Tsunayoshi mumbled. "Left about a four inch furrow on the side of my belly."

Reborn nodded slowly. "And why were you shot?" he asked. "Why were they chasing you?"

 "I broke into their warehouse."

"Why?"

Tsunayoshi didn't answer for a moment, staring at the pacifier and closing his eyes. "No one else had meds anymore," he answered and frowned a little, twisting where he lay. Fighting, Reborn could feel it. The kid was trying to force the foreign Flames out of his body. "I… had to get the… the meds…"

No time to waste then.

"Tsunayoshi," Reborn said, shifting closer and grabbing the kid's cheek to force him to face him properly. "Who were they? The men in white uniforms, who were they?"

The kid blinked at him, frowning, and trying to pull back. Then something in his face eased up – like he saw something in Reborn's face that made him relax. "Millefiore," he said slowly, staring at Reborn's eyes now. "They were the Millefiore."

"What?" Reborn could hear Oregano murmur in the back. "Millefiore? Who…"

"Reborn what the hell?" Iemitsu hissed at him in Italian as Reborn stood up, satisfied. "Explain this to me," the head of CEDEF demanded.

Reborn didn't answer immediately, eying the kid on the floor instead. This mission had been mainly about making sure that there wasn't a threat brewing inside the family. The Ninth had his successor all picked out and there wasn't any space for an inheritance struggle, especially one possibly influenced by outsiders. If Tsunayoshi had proved a potential risk…

But this was _much_ more interesting.

"Have you heard about the Bovino family?" Reborn asked in Italian as well, turning to look at the CEDEF members.

"He said Millefiore," Iemitsu said slowly but frowned in concentration. "What about them? They aren't even around anymore."

"No, they were wiped out. But from last I heard, the Bovino family was experimenting with time travel," Reborn said, shaking his head. "Something about bazookas or something equally stupid. And if the rumours are to be believed, the Vindice captured all their research before anyone else could. You might want to look into that."

Iemitsu frowned at that, looking towards his son who was now pressing his forehead against the floor, apparently trying to force reality back into his own mind through physical means. Judging by the looks of it, it might actually be working mostly.

"That memory," Iemitsu said slowly, looking at him warily. "You don't think it's fake?"

"I know what faked memories look like," Reborn shrugged. "And I know what it looks like… when you're too old for your own body."

Tsunayoshi had the same eyes as they all had had that first day on that trice cursed mountain top, the day the Arcobaleno curse had come upon them.

Reborn shook his head. "Get a brain scan on him," he said and turned to leave. "I have to call my niece."

 

* * *

 

Hana bit the inside her cheek to try and stay still and non-moving. She had no idea what was going on and she couldn't even understand most of what was being said around her – but she knew that it would be bad if they realised she was awake. Beside her Tsuna was struggling to gain some clarity after what… what was done to him, and what the infant had been asking him. It didn't seem to be going too well.

What the hell were Millefiore? What thing they saw, did that… was it real, did it happen? Did it happen to _Tsuna_?

The blond man who seemed to be the leader of the lot stood staring after the strange child that had questioned Tsuna in Japanese before he snapped out a few quick words – orders. The others nodded and went to check in on the thugs Tsuna and Hibari had beaten up. Even at a distance Hana could see them doing something to them – the woman with glasses had taken out a small metal case, inside which Hana could see needles. She was… injecting something into the thug's necks.

When she turned to do the same to Hibari, however, Tsuna snarled at her. "Don't," he hissed, and Hana quickly shut her eyes as the woman turned to look at him – and at Hana, who lay between them. "Not them. I will _kill you_ if you touch them."

"Tsuna," the blond man said soothingly, coming to his side with his hands held up soothingly. "It's nothing bad – it's just something to make sure they don't remember –"

Tsuna didn't seem to care – Hana could hear a grunt and could easily imagine him trying to attack the blond man. Because Tsuna definitely would, even in this sort of situation, the nutcase. "Not them," Tsuna said and then a little more quietly, sounding confused. "... Iemitsu?"

"Yeah, Tuna-fish, it's me," the blond man said soothingly which was – _what_? "We're here to help."

"No, you're not – you _knocked_ me out," Tsuna growled.

"For your own good," the man assured him quickly. "They're your friends, huh?"

"Don't _touch_ them," Tsuna hissed and Hana could hear him moving. "I won't let you –"

There was a sound of Tsuna trying to get up but apparently though he could move, it didn't get him very far – and it left him gasping afterwards, so the struggle wasn't an easy one even for his insane determination. There was a moment of stillness and quiet while Tsuna caught his breath, and when the man finally spoke, his voice was very low.

"Hey, Tsuna. You don't remember me, do you?" he asked. "You don't remember me at all, huh? What happened to me in the future?"

"… I figured you died, early on. You never came back," Tsuna answered, low. "A lot of people died early on."

"… Right," the man muttered and then sighed. "What a freaking mess. Hey, if we don't touch your friends, will you co-operate?" he then asked. "We'll… drop them at your school or something, alright – and you come with us without causing any trouble, alright?"

Tsuna didn't answer, but after a moment, Hana could hear the people around them moving again. Tsuna sighed heavily beside her, and the people were talking in Italian again, every word of which went completely over her head.

"What the hell is even going on?" Tsuna grumbled and Hana agreed with every single ounce of _what the fuck_ in his voice.

Not much after that, someone was at her side and it took every ounce of determination not to shriek as hands came around her shoulders to pull her up. Holding her breath, Hana let herself be picked up. She was carried to what she soon figured was the back of a truck, where she was laid down only soon to be joined by another lax body that was laid beside her. Hibari, probably – who, being the lucky bastard he was, was _actually_ unconscious.

Tsuna, she soon figured out, wasn't in the car with them – and as they were driven off, back to the school, she had to wonder what the hell Tsuna had agreed to, and what his connection to these guys really was.

Just what the hell had she gotten involved with? Whatever it was, it certainly wasn't worth a single yen of the Namimori Middle School's betting pool, that was for damn certain

The people took her and Hibari back to the school and there to the reception room where they were laid down on the couches, Hibari on one and Hana the other. It wasn't until after the people had left that Hana dared to try and open her eyes again, and to move.

The weird paralysis she'd been under was passing now, though still slowly. How Tsuna had managed to fight through it and _move_ she had no idea. Why she'd stayed awake, she had no idea. Who were the people, what had they wanted – what the hell that thing they'd done to Tsuna was and how the hell it was even possible and how Tsuna of all people was connected to the whole thing… she had no idea.

Did she even want to know? She didn't know that either.

"So," she said in a dry tone to Hibari's unconscious form. She was shaking a little, and she didn't know whether it was the paralysis wearing off – or the panic belatedly kicking in. "So," she tried again, her voice trembling a little. "Yeah. _That_ happened."

Hibari, the lucky bastard, didn't answer.

 

* * *

 

Iemitsu paced along the room while Oregano and a doctor fiddled with the computers. Croquant had headed off wherever and Basil was very awkwardly trying to calm Iemitsu down while Tsuna lay in the MRI machine. They might've taken over a small private hospital. Iemitsu wasn't _quite_ sure, but judging by the nervous looking civilian doctor watching over Tsuna's scan, they probably had the hospital at gun point.

Everything was such a weird, convoluted mess.

"Master, please," Basil said awkwardly. "We will know more soon, please, calm down."

"No," Iemitsu answered, a little petulantly – a lot petulantly. Not being calm was the only thing he felt like he had the control over right now so he'd damn well _panic_ all he wanted to, damn it.

None of this made any god-damned sense. This whole thing was a mess of things he didn't understand and couldn't quite wrap his mind around – Reborn and the Arcobaleno and the fucking Bovino family, what the hell? And who the hell were the Millefiore? And at the heart of it there was his son.

An older, scruffier, worn down Tsuna with a bullet wound on his belly and a desperate look on his weather worn, starved face. Who killed people without pause and then had to run away from a freaking tank. Who'd forgotten him because for Tsuna, he'd died _years_ ago. What the actual _hell_ was he supposed to even think about that?

Oregano cleared her throat and Iemitsu stopped to look at her. "We have the scans."

Iemitsu was for a moment absolutely torn between going to his kid and checking the scans. Not that he'd understand much of them anyway – medicine was not his field. "Anything on them?"

Oregano blinked and turned to look at the doctor, who looked nervously between Iemitsu and his worker. "Well," the doctor stuttered. "I-I would need to have a closer look at them and uh –"

"Then have a closer look," Iemitsu snapped and then walked out of the room, and to the one with the scanner – which was just releasing Tsuna from the machine. The boy was scowling at the inside of the machine as it pushed him and the gurney he lay on out, and when his eyes met Iemitsu, the scowl hardened into something sharp and cautious.

"Thank you," Iemitsu said slowly, awkwardly. "Are you, uh, alright?"

" _No_ ," Tsuna snarled as he sat up. "What is the point of this?"

Iemitsu shrugged and felt a little like shoving his hands into his pockets like a sheepish kid. Honestly he wasn't sure – but Reborn wouldn't have suggested it for no reason, so. "Come on," he said, more than a little uncomfortable because… how was he even supposed to do _this_? "Let see what came up on the scans."

Tsuna acquiesced with every move begrudging and unwilling. Iemitsu was stricken by the realisation that he didn't know Tsuna any more than Tsuna knew him. This… older Tsuna was wary of him – even more so now than he'd been before. And Iemitsu had a feeling he'd made a lot of mistakes here, all of them in quick succession because this wasn't even about Tsuna just not remembering him anymore. It was far worse now.

Iemitsu had threatened Tsuna's friends – so he was a threat now, and every bit of Tsuna screamed that at him. But Tsuna was facing it and forcing himself through it – forcing himself to do what Iemitsu asked him… because of his friends. And Iemitsu had seen this so many times he knew what it was, how Tsuna was acting. Suspicious, nervous, furious – but resigned.

Tsuna thought he was being held hostage. That he was being held prisoner by his own father. And Iemitsu wasn't sure how to convince him he wasn't.

His anxiety mutating into something far worse, Iemitsu led Tsuna to the MIR control room, where Oregano and the doctor they had at gun point were looking at the scans.

"Well?" Iemitsu asked.

"We-well," the doctor said nervously, pointing at the screen where they had the digital scan on display. "I-if this was a normal situation, I'd, uh, suggest further studies – there is sign of s-some abnormal brain activity and – growth, I should say? I-I cannot tell you much more without f-further scans and tests but --"

The doctor fumbled with the screen controls as Oregano stared at him coolly, and another brain scan popped up beside the one they had on Tsuna. "T-this is a normal fourteen year old brain – y-you can see the difference clearly, I h-hope?" the doctor said nervously.

Iemitsu frowned at the scans. "I really can't," he admitted. They both looked like black and white walnut intersections to him. "Explain it to me?"

"We-well," the doctor stuttered, pointing at the edges. "H-here in the normal teenage brain – you see these wrinkles here? Well, this scan –" he motioned at Tsuna's brain scan. "I-it seems to have abnormal complexity? A-also," he clicked the screen controller a few time. "H-his brain activity is also abnormal for a fourteen year old – m-more activity in the frontal lobe, for example. It's something y-you usually see in a more adult mind…"

Iemitsu scowled at the scans. So that's what Reborn wanted him to see. "Grab the scans and delete everything," he ordered Oregano. "Send the scans to our doctors, see what they have to say. Deal with…" he motioned at the doctor. "This. Basil?"

"Yes, Master?"

"Get the car."

Tsuna watched this all silently, his eyes abnormally perceptive as his gaze flickered between Iemitsu and his people. Iemitsu felt a little like shrinking under the gaze – and he could see now what Reborn meant about older eyes. Tsuna's eyes were even older than the guy in the memory had been.

"Now what?" Tsuna finally asked, wary, so very wary.

"Now we go home," Iemitsu said – because that… might ease things a bit. And he honestly didn't know what else to do. Turmeric and Lal Mirch were looking into the Bovino's research, Reborn was who even knew where doing who knew what along with Croquant who Iemitsu had a dark feeling probably had already reported the whole mess back to the Ninth… and now they had the scans. The rest was just waiting, confirming what they suspected and figuring things out.

So. He'd take Tsuna home and… try and figure what to _do_ with this.

"What about mom?" Tsuna then asked, his voice quiet and almost… betrayed.

"She doesn't know," Iemitsu told him and squeezed his hands to keep himself from wincing because, _good god_ that wasn't a look a dad wanted to get from his son. "About… she doesn't know anything. She's… she's good. I swear."

The boy – and the man _inside_ the boy – both stared at him hard and flat and _brutal_ for a long while. Then, finally, he nodded. And somehow Iemitsu had a feeling that with that nod probably went all his rights to call himself Tsuna's _dad_ anymore.


	12. Chapter 12

It didn't take much to figure out that Iemitsu's talk with Tsuna had gone horribly wrong.

Nana looked between her son and her husband as they ate, with as much distance between them as the table would allow. Tsuna was not looking away from his food and the look on his face was even worse than it had been before – even stranger. Iemitsu was looking at Tsuna but it was the look of a man who'd messed up – and Nana would know. She forgave her hubby a lot, but he also messed up quite a bit. Especially in the beginning when he was home a lot more.

But this wasn't just a fight, even she could see that. This wasn't the aftermath of your usual shouting match. Not with the way Tsuna was gritting his teeth like he was doing his best at baring something. Not with Iemitsu wincing so much.

Tsuna ate faster than he usually did too. A lot faster. Trying to get his breakfast done as fast as he could.

"Can I go to school?" Tsuna then asked, which was… a slightly weird question to ask, Nana thought. Especially since he was aiming the question as Iemitsu.

"Of course you will go to school, Tuna-fish – it's a normal school day," Iemitsu answered with a painful looking smile.

Tsuna nodded and stood up to take his dishes to the sink. Nana watched him the whole way and winced a little herself as Tsuna then just walked out of the room – without hugging her. He usually hugged her at every opportunity he got these days, but not today, it seemed. He hadn't done it yesterday before bed either, or after dinner, or…

No, he'd just went to his room and stayed there. Nana had seen him. He'd just sat on his bed most of the day, doing pretty much nothing.

"Iemitsu?" Nana asked, hugging herself and looking at her husband pleadingly. "What did you do?"

"I messed up, darling," Iemitsu admitted quietly. "I messed up big. But I'll make it up to Tsuna, I promise. I'll… figure it out. Somehow."

 

* * *

 

"So how did the fight go yesterday?" Kyoko asked, stretching out her arms. It felt like there wasn't a muscle group on her body that wasn't aching after not only the work out that morning, but the one from the previous day _and_ the reps of push-ups, sit-ups, crunches, and everything else Ryohei had her doing. It wasn't much so far – she could only do sets of seven – but she could already feel the effect.

The effect was lot of aching muscles.

"Is Tsuna alright?" Kyoko asked, turning to Hana. "He didn't get injured right? He and Hibari agreed on rules, right?"

"Well," Hana mused, with a weird look on her face. "Yeah, they did, but they didn't really fight in the end. Some other stuff happened."

She fell quiet, biting her lip. Kyoko eyed the look on her face and then stopped. Hana didn't do _worried_ too well, and whenever she was worried it was always plainly obvious. "Hana, what happened? Are you alright?"

Her friend hesitated and made a face. "I don't – hm," she stopped with a frown. "I'm alright I guess. But have you ever seen something happen that…" she stopped again and sighed. "I don't know, I just have no idea. I saw some stuff happen yesterday that I don't think I understand and maybe I shouldn't talk about it either," she muttered.

Kyoko blinked at that before folding her arms. Some stuff Hana didn't understand and shouldn't talk about? What did that mean? Tilting her head to the side, Kyoko tried to imagine what Hana would think was too sensitive to share about Tsuna and Hibari of all people.

A thought of Hibari and Tsuna hooking up popped in her head and Kyoko made a face. Surely not. It was _Hibari_ after all. And Tsuna. They wanted to beat each other up, not… well. "Did they do something?" Kyoko asked slowly because who could even know with Hibari actually, and Tsuna was a little strange these days too. "I mean, something weirder than usual?"

"Well not really. Not them, anyway," Hana muttered. "It was some other people – I don't really get it. I think… I think I should probably talk with Tsuna about this before I talk with anyone else though."

Kyoko pursed her lips in thought. Okay, yeah, the hook up theory was a little too silly. "Okay then," she said slowly. "But you're okay? And they're okay?"

"Well, Hibari is. I don't… actually know about Tsuna, they, um… he went off with some other people and," Hana hesitated and then scowled. "I guess we'll see if he comes to school."

They headed inside, with pretty much only Kyoko talking while Hana looked at nothing in particular and only hummed occasionally in answer. Their classroom was mostly empty when they got there – mostly, except for a student who did not belong there. Hibari was there, sitting on Tsuna's desk, looking irritated.

"Herbivore – where's Sawada?" he asked when he noticed Hana.

"Dunno," Hana shrugged. "Haven't seen him yet. And it's still Kurokawa, _Hibari_."

Hibari scowled at her and then folded his arms – which, with one of them still in a cast, looked a little funny. He harrumphed and then closed his eyes, apparently intending to just sit there and wait.

"I guess he thinks something strange happened too, then?" Kyoko asked quietly while surreptitiously checking Hibari over. He had no new injuries that she could see.

"Yeah, he would," Hana sighed and sat down on her own desk, staring at the floor with a frown for a moment. Then she looked up at Hibari and for a moment she looked like she wanted to say something – but in the end didn't, biting her lip instead and scowling at the floor.

Looking between the two of them, Kyoko sighed. It was going to be a strange day, wasn't it?

 

* * *

 

Takeshi peered quietly up at the clouds. It would be a good day for practice – if only it would be a good practice. They hadn't been going so well lately – which was a damned shame, considering that school had been so interesting the past couple of days otherwise.

"Oi, Yamamoto!" one of his classmates, Nishimura, called. "Morning! See you at practice later, yeah?"

"Yeah," Takeshi answered with a smile plastered on his face that didn't really reach his eyes. "See you later."

As Nishimura turned around the head inside with some of his friends outside the team, Takeshi sighed to himself. There'd be another practice with another set of stats – and probably another drop in his average. While he still did better than most of the team, there was a definite downward curve in his performance in pretty much everything. Hitting, pitching, running – everything was talking a slow downward drop. He didn't think the others had noticed it yet, but he had. And soon it would be plainly obvious to everyone else.

He was performing worse, no matter how he tried – and so far not even extra practice had helped. And in the meantime the rest of the team was so cheerful and looking forward to the upcoming matches, all blissfully unaware of how badly he was really doing.

Maybe with little more practice… the soccer club used the fields in the morning, but maybe he could add some basic reps on top of what he usually did…

He was thinking of potential routes to take with training to improve even a little bit when he spotted a semi familiar figure. Sawada No-Good Tsuna – one of the reasons why school had been so interesting lately – hung awkwardly by the school gates, not going in but leaning onto the stone gates with a weird look on his face.

No-Good Tsuna who'd always been the worst at _everything_ from sports to school work – the only reason Takeshi himself wasn't on the bottom of the scoreboard when it came to school records outside sports was because the place was already inhabited by Tsuna. And yet…

And yet lately Tsuna had been pretty interesting. Fighting with Hibari Kyoya and stuff. People were actually betting on their fights and everything – Takeshi himself had bet a hundred and fifty on Hibari. The fight had been supposed to happen yesterday, but he'd never found out where it had happened.

"Hey, Tsuna!" he called and jogged over to the shorter first year student. "You had a fight with Hibari yesterday, right? How did it go?"

Tsuna turned to look at him – and the way he looked kind of stopped Takeshi dead in his tracks. "Oh, whoa, dude, are you okay?" Takeshi asked and just barely managed to keep himself from taking a step back. Tsuna's eyes had… kind of a creepy look in them. "Did you lose to Hibari or something? Hey, it's not that bad, right – I mean," Takeshi scratched his neck, looking Tsuna over. He didn't _look_ injured. Any more injured than he'd been before. "You didn't break anything or anything, right?"

There was just silence for a long while, with Tsuna just _staring_ at him with his weird, dead eyes. "Sorry," Tsuna said after an awkwardly long moment of just staring and blinked. "Who are you?"

"I'm, uh," Takeshi blinked, a little stunned. "It's Yamamoto. I'm in your class?"

"Sorry, I'm not good with people," Tsuna muttered and looked away, frowning. "Did you want something?"

"No, I… never mind, it's nothing, I guess," Takeshi said, unspeakably awkward now. He had no idea what was going on, but Tsuna looked a little like someone had killed his puppy – killed all his puppies and set the kennel on fire on top of it. It was all sorts of _awful_ to look at. "Hey, um. If Hibari's bothering you or something – I mean, if his squad is being a bother…"

"They're fine," Tsuna sighed and looked at him. "What do you want?"

Takeshi stopped at that, meeting his eyes – and somehow… "Hey, Tsuna, I have a question for you," he said slowly, not sure why he was doing this but for some reason it felt like… like Tsuna could help. Or that at least it couldn't hurt to ask. And hell, maybe it would distract Tsuna from what made him look like the world was ending.

"I play baseball, like, a lot," Takeshi said awkwardly. "I think I'm pretty good at it too. But I've been getting worse lately, my average on everything's dropping. Everyone else in the team is improving, but me, and I, uh… I guess I used to be the best." He paused awkwardly, scratching at the back of his head. It was _hard_ to stand still under Tsuna's gaze. "And now I'm just getting worse with each session. So. What do you think I should do?"

Tsuna didn't say anything for a moment. Then he blinked – and seemed to ease up a bit. "You used to be the best, but now you're getting worse, while your team is improving?" he asked and Takeshi nodded. "So… maybe you're just not improving."

"Well, yeah that's what I'm saying – but I'm getting worse," Takeshi said.

"Are you? Or are you just staying the same while everyone else is getting better?" Tsuna asked. "I mean, I don't know much about baseball. But I know there's a limit to how far you can push your body – at some point you meet a limit. You're probably at that limit, so you've stopped improving – but your team hasn't met it yet, so they are."

Tsuna shrugged. "Sorry if that doesn't help," he added and turned to the school. "We should head to class."

"… Yeah," Takeshi said, frowning and with his hands crossed behind his head he followed Tsuna in, thinking about it. A limit, huh. He hadn't thought to look at the other's scores – but their averages _were_ calculated from the average of the whole group. Maybe… maybe it really was that he hadn't changed at all – it was just that his team was getting better around him.

"Hey," he said. "Is there a way to push past that limit?"

"Yeah," Tsuna answered with a heavy sigh. "But the stuff on the other side isn't pretty."

 

* * *

 

Hibari glared at Sawada's classmates, keeping them at bay. There was thus a circle of emptiness around Sawada's desk when the scavenger finally deigned to appear – and by that time, it was almost time for classes to start. Not that Hibari really _cared_ at this point.

When Sawada entered, Hibari jumped to his feet and stalked over to him, making the scavenger stop dead in his tracks. "Hibari?" he asked, awkward and uneasy and then hurriedly skipped backwards out of the classroom and into the mostly empty hallway. The moment they were out, Hibari slammed the door shut, keeping Sawada's classmates inside, the herbivore from yesterday included.

"What the _hell_ happened yesterday?" Hibari demanded in a low hiss. "How did I end up here? I don't remember coming here."

Sawada hesitated for a moment and then skipped backwards again as Hibari took a step forward. "Iemitsu – ah, my father found us," he said then. "He knocked you out."

That wasn't what Hibari had been expecting. "Why?" he asked incredulously and then narrowed his eyes. Sawada had been avoiding his father the whole day yesterday – that was why they'd done the ridiculous free running after all. If the first thing the man did after finding them was _knocking them out_ …

"To get you out of the way, I guess," Sawada muttered. "He… wanted some stuff from me. You and Kurokawa were in the way, so he knocked you guys out. Knocked me out too, at first," he added and then shook his head. "You shouldn't be any worse off because of it, though."

Hibari glared at him. "And what precisely did he want from you?"

Sawada looked away with a grimace and didn't answer. Which was probably answer enough.

Well. Sawada had built up his defensive mechanisms and mannerisms – never mind both his fighting and avoiding skills – for a reason, it seemed. If Sawada had a father like that, it certainly explained things about him. You didn't become a scavenger in a happy home, after all.

"Meet me in the reception room after school," Hibari said.

"I probably need to go straight home after school," Sawada answered with a frown.

"I don't care," Hibari growled. "Reception room, after school."

Sawada looked up at him with a frown and looked a lot like he wanted to argue – but Hibari glared him down and for the first time it seemed to actually have an effect on him. "Fine," the scavenger answered. "I'll be there."

Hibari nodded, satisfied with that. Then he frowned. "Did your… father take my tonfa? I just got that set."

"Probably," Sawada answered with a sigh. "I can ask about it but I wouldn't hold any hope."

"Tch," Hibari answered and turned around to leave. "Don't be late," he ordered as he stalked off.

Sawada didn't answer – but Hibari could feel his eyes on himself all the way down the hall. As the corner broke the eye contact, Hibari glared at the school around himself and then headed off to find Kusakabe – who had a better grasp on these… insipid social problems than he'd ever bothered to get himself. He had some questions he needed answers to from someone he could trust. And he needed to figure out what questions to ask _Sawada_ once the time came.

This whole thing with the Scavenger was starting to get to him – and now that it had gotten him, he was damn well going to get to the bottom of it.

 

* * *

 

Reborn stroked a hand over his chin, watching young Tsunayoshi through his green set of binoculars. The kid was taking a seat in his classroom and judging by the looks of it, he had some trouble paying attention to his class. Which, considering what had happened, wasn't that strange.

People of their world generally didn't do too well, interacting with civilians – but Iemitsu might've shot all of them in the foot with the way he'd handled young Tsunayoshi. Reborn could see why he had – though he'd never had the displeasure of children of his own, he could just about see how having them and then having problems with them made you feel and behave. But still – Iemitsu had overreacted and what had been a minor issue had turned into a full blown _situation_.

And now they had what might be the only solution to an enormous problem they didn't even know was coming – and the solution had been pretty much _burned_ by them.

"Well, part of it is my fault, probably," Reborn mused, lowering the binoculars and looking down. Leon shifted smoothly back into a chameleon in his hands, and Reborn lifted him to the brim of his hat before sitting down on the edge of the building's rooftop. Tsunayoshi's school was just across the street and seeing that the boy was stuck in class for the next hour or so, Reborn could do some thinking.

They'd all over reacted. It had been for a good reason, and still was – Tsuna could still prove himself a risk to the Vongola. But the fact remained – they'd acted too fast, and too abruptly. Iemitsu had called for a Mist user famed for his interrogation skills – to deal with his own son. That in turn had made the Ninth nervous, and so he'd sent Reborn – to kill his own heir if necessary. Then Reborn's presence had exacerbated on the situation, and what could've been just a precautionary check-up had turned into a session of mental violation and interrogation – capped with medical violation.

If young Tsunayoshi would ever trust anyone that had anything to do with any of them, that would be a small miracle. And considering what he _was_ , well…

"Funny that you should ask," Aria had told him when she'd called him. "I had the strangest dream a few days ago. There was a girl in it with the Giglio Nero sign tattooed on her cheek and she was carrying my pacifier. I thought it was just a vision – of my own future child maybe but…"

The girl, whom Aria described as young, bright, and _floating_ had told Aria that she was giving someone a terrible burden – that it was just a precautionary measure really, but just in case… "She told me that there was a chance that something might go wrong again, so there'd be someone who knew the future," Aria had told him. "Someone very special."

Tsunayoshi was, apparently, that very special someone. And considering everything…

Reborn sighed, folding his arms and pursing his lips a bit. He'd looked into the Millefiore and pretty much nothing had come up. The name meant Thousand Flowers but that wasn't particularly helpful, was it? But judging by what they'd seen in Tsunayoshi's memory, they were a fairly powerful organisation – in the future. The future that was only known by Tsunayoshi – whose burden it was to bear those memories.

Why this kid?

Because _no one else_ had survived to that point?

Reborn thought back to the man in the memory, with his Flame-filled eyes and on-the-fly fighting. It hadn't been all that impressive – he'd seen lesser men with better skills and techniques. But somehow Tsunayoshi had survived in what had looked like a downright apocalyptic situation. And of course, all they had seen was a very small glimpse of the future. For all they knew, it had been an undercover mission for Tsunayoshi. For all they knew, Tsunayoshi was the boss of the Vongola in the future.

Well, a boss of the Vongola probably would've done better when Iemitsu had captured him – besides, Tsunayoshi didn't seem to know them, didn't know Reborn and his affiliation with the Vongola ran fairly deep. The kid would've known him at least by sight, probably. But it had been the pacifier he'd recognised.

There were far more questions than there were answers, really. What had happened in the future, who were the Millefiore, and what was Tsunayoshi's part in all of this, both in the future and here, in the present? Was he the _chosen one_ who would save them all? Or was he the assassin sent back in time to kill the present version of Hitler?

Reborn snorted at that and tugged at the brim of his hat. The whole thing was utterly ludicrous but it was also pretty interesting. It was _chaos_.

"I think I'll stick around here for a little while, Leon," Reborn said conversationally. "It seems like things are about to get exciting around here."

 


	13. Chapter 13

"Hey, Tsuna, wait."

Tsuna stopped by the classroom door, turning to look at Kurokawa who'd caught up with him, a nervous but determined look on her face. "You're going to see Hibari, right? To talk about what… what happened?" Kurokawa asked seriously.

"Yeah, I guess," Tsuna agreed. Though after the whole school day he still didn't know _what_ to actually say about it, or how to explain it. Hell, he wasn't entirely sure how to explain the whole thing to himself, either. But, well. Hibari had asked for it. "So you want to come along?" Tsuna asked, looking her over. She didn't look any worse for wear – but he had a feeling she wasn't any happier about the whole incident than Hibari was.

"Yeah, if that's okay," Kurokawa nodded, something dark passing over her eyes. "There's some stuff I want to ask you about what happened."

"Yeah, figured so," Tsuna sighed. "I guess its fine. Hibari might not agree though."

"Hibari can _suck it_ ," Kurokawa muttered and Tsuna almost smiled at that. She didn't seem too badly affected since she could still sass Hibari, at any rate, and he was glad of it. And a bit jealous too, maybe, but there was no helping his own part in all of this.

This too, it seemed, was his burden to bear.

"Hey, can I come too?" another voice interjected cautiously and Kyoko peeked over Hana's shoulder at Tsuna. "I mean, if it's not like super private or anything. I've got fifteen minutes before my boxing practice and, uh – well. I guess I'm worried. You guys have been acting weird all day, and – you know…" She shrank a little under Tsuna's eyes and bit her lip. "I guess that's a no?" she asked hesitantly.

Tsuna met Kurokawa's eyes and got a very narrow look in return. Whether she wanted him to say no to Kyoko or not, though, he wasn't entirely sure. His first instinct was to keep Kyoko away, keep her innocent. But on the other hand… innocence made you vulnerable. And at any rate, it wasn't really his choice to make.

"Sure," Tsuna said. "You can come if you want."

Kyoko smiled brightly at that, and it kind of hurt Tsuna's heart how happy she looked about being included. "Well then –"

"Hey, what are you guys doing? What is this, a meeting?"

It was Yamamoto, who walked towards them with a bright grin. "Are you guys gonna hang out together or something?" he asked. "Hey, can I come along?"

Tsuna looked at him blankly for a moment and then at Kurokawa and Kyoko who did the same with varying levels of confusion. They looked at him, Kyoko shrugging and Hana with her lips pressed together in tight line. "Why?" Tsuna asked, turning to Yamamoto. "This has nothing to do with you."

Yamamoto blinked at that, taken back a little – and for a moment Tsuna could see him hesitating, rethinking.  "Well… I thought about what you said before. And you're pretty cool, it turns out," Yamamoto finally said, stroking his chin and grinning. "And I wanna know more, I guess?"

"Do you?" Tsuna asked seriously, narrowing his eyes. "Really, do you?"

Yamamoto's smile froze at that and his hand lowered. Tsuna could see Hana and Kyoko exchanging confused glances, Hana shrugging her shoulders and Kyoko shaking her head. After a moment, though, Yamamoto nodded slowly. "Yeah," he said. "I do."

"Fine," Tsuna said and turned with a sigh. What a _mess._ "Let's just go."

Well… it wasn't like he was planning to tell them the truth anyway.

 

* * *

 

Takeshi looked between Tsuna, Sasagawa and Kurokawa and quietly re-thought his plans. After his talk with Tsuna he'd figured he might've hit on something he was missing before, something that might help him figure it all out – not just Baseball and getting better but other things. There was just… something about what Tsuna had said and how he'd said it. Like he knew something _more_ about things.

He was still pretty sure he got that spot on, but maybe he shouldn't have butted in on Tsuna and the girls' hanging out time? Tsuna didn't seem too happy about it – he still kinda looked dead on his feet and boy he had a cool look when he was irritated. But cool or not, he seemed kinda mad. And the girls didn't seem to like it either. So maybe Takeshi was being a bother.

Well. Nothing to it – he'd joined in, Tsuna had let him, so that was that.

"So, where are we going?" Takeshi asked as Tsuna led them up the stairs. "The roof?"

"Reception room," Tsuna answered. "Hibari's waiting for me."

Takeshi grinned at that. Okay, _that_ made more sense. "You two gonna fight again?"

"No idea," Tsuna answered.

"You're not in a good mood, huh?"

"No, I'm not."

"Huh."

Takeshi fell quiet, scratching at his cheek. Okay, not poking that anymore then. He glanced at the girls instead. Kurokawa was staring dead ahead with a frown on her face while Sasagawa was fiddling with the hem of her sweater, looking a little nervous. So it wasn't just him who felt the atmosphere grow worse.

Takeshi sighed a bit. Maybe this had been a bad idea after all.

Hibari really was waiting for Tsuna – and even though he was laying on one of the couches looking all cosy, he also looked pretty annoyed about it. He wasn't alone, the big guy from the Disciplinary Committee, Kusa-something, was there too, standing behind the couch with a note book in hand and a look of dark concentration on his face.

"Sawada," Hibari said, sitting up and glaring at the girls and Takeshi. "Did I tell you to bring a crowd?"

"You didn't tell me _not to_ , Hibari," Tsuna answered and just walked in and sat on the couch across from the one Hibari was sitting on. "Besides, Kurokawa has questions too."

With some hesitation, Sasagawa and Kurokawa sat on either side of him. Takeshi hesitated a bit and then stood behind their couch, a little amused by the fact that he'd somehow taken the lackey position mirroring Kusakabe. What was this even, some sort of weird showdown? A truce meeting between two hostile parties? Were they about to sign a peace treaty?

It seemed pretty interesting at any rate.

Hibari and Tsuna glared at each other for a bit, and then Hibari leaned back. "Fine. Kusakabe."

"Right," the lackey behind Hibari said and lifted his notebook. "I've got some questions, I'd like you to answer them quickly and simply. Your answers will be recorded. Do you understand?"

"What?" Tsuna asked, now less irritated and more confused.

"Then lets get started," Kusakabe said. "What do you think about your father?"

Tsuna stared at him for a moment while Kurokawa let out a thoughtful hum and leaned back, her arms crossed. Sasagawa just looked confused. "What - seriously?" Tsuna asked, turning to Hibari who just glared at him. Tsuna sighed and held out his hand. "Lemme see that," he said to Kusakabe.

The lackey glanced at his boss and only once Hibari had nodded did he hand over the notebook. Curious, Takeshi leaned over the backrest of the couch to see what was written there – Kurokawa and Sasagawa did the same at Tsuna's sides.

And oh, boy, was it a questionnaire.

What do you think about your father? Do you think your father is a good parent? How about your mother? Has/have your parent(s) ever done anything that makes you uncomfortable? If yes, name example? How is your home life? Do you feel safe at home? And so on and so on. The questions got heavier and heavier towards the end and they were actually kind of uncomfortable to read because… apparently Kusakabe and Hibari had prepared them especially for _Sawada Tsuna_. They even had a line in the end for Tsuna's signature.

Okay, Takashi really probably had butted into something he had no business butting in on. Like… seriously. Holy crap.

"Oh give me a break," Tsuna grumbled, running a hand over his face. "I'm not being abused, Hibari."

"Oh?" Hibari asked, arching a single eyebrow at him. "Then explain your father knocking myself, Kurokawa, and you _unconscious_."

"… Wait," Sasagawa said, her eyes widening. "What? Tsuna – your dad – what?"

Oh boy. Takeshi leaned his elbows on the backrest of the couch, looking between Tsuna and Kurokawa, the first of whom was scowling at the questionnaire and the latter of whom was biting her lip. Sasagawa was looking between them, her eyes growing only wider, and then finally she looked towards Hibari – _Hibari_ who somehow seemed the most forthcoming of the lot.

"Hibari, is it true? Tsuna's dad knocked you all unconscious yesterday?" Sasagawa asked. "Is that why you didn't fight?"

Hibari gave her a cool look and then looked at Tsuna. "Well?" he demanded.

Tsuna didn't react immediately, but as pretty much everyone there turned to stare at him, he finally sighed and handed back the notebook. "This isn't something you want to get involved with, Hibari," he said. "I mean it seriously."

"Do you?"

"I really do," Tsuna said, shaking his head and he sounded almost sad. "You step into that world and there's no getting out again. Even a miracle can't get you out, it turns out."

Takeshi looked between Tsuna and Hibari. It was a bit like watching a tennis match, except the ball was a bomb and it was about to blow up in someone's face. He had his bets on it being Hibari – as determined as he was, Tsuna was… something else. Relentless, maybe. He, Takeshi thought, wouldn't give up no matter what.

"Tsuna," Kurokawa suddenly spoke. "I, uh. I was awake the whole time. I saw everything."

And suddenly the tension of the room racketed up sky high.

 

* * *

 

Reborn folded his arms, smiling faintly to himself. He was sitting on the ledge just outside the Namimori Middle School reception room window, with a green stethoscope in his ears, the resonator pressed against the glass at his back. And the discussion going on inside was very interesting indeed.

It seemed like Tsunayoshi had surrounded himself with some determined people.

"Everything," Tsunayoshi said slowly.

"Everything. Not that I understood that… thing they did, but yeah," the wavy haired girl – Kurokawa Hana, according to Reborn's research – answered with a slight, nervous breath. "I mean… I maybe understand but at the same time I really don't. I don't know _how_ but… um. That thing wasn't just for show, was it?"

"What's she talking about?" the tonfa-kid – Hibari Kyoya, a year older than Tsunayoshi, president of the Namimori Middle School Disciplinary Committee – demanded. "Sawada?"

Tsunayoshi was quiet and Reborn chanced a glance into the room. No one was paying much attention to the windows, everyone was staring at Iemitsu's kid who had his head bowed, hands covering his face. Someone might've read defeat in the posture. Someone might've been wrong though. It was far more complicated than that. It was in part a stalling tactic and probably some sort of self comfort thing. Shutting out the world for a moment to gather his thoughts. The interesting thing about it wasn't really what it was, but that Tsunayoshi did it at all.

It was a _defenceless_ posture, after all. But maybe it made sense that Tsunayoshi would feel safer around younger people, safe enough to reveal his neck at them like that. These kids weren't as big of a threat as Iemitsu and the others, after all.

When Tsunayoshi looked up, his face was void of emotion, his eyes full of Flame. Reborn watched him, wondering. What would he do now? Drag these kids into his world, whatever he thought that world was? Or try and shake them off for their own safety? They seemed to be his friends at least in some ways. It would make sense if he tried to protect them, even against their will. It seemed a very _Sawada_ type of thing to do.

"Anyone who wants to lead a normal life needs to leave now and forget this ever happened," Tsunayoshi finally said, meeting Hibari's eyes. "I _mean_ it."

There were a lot of exchanged looks and nervous frowns – Sasagawa Kyoko seemed especially hesitant, possibly due to having less info about the situation. Then there was the new boy –Yamamoto Takeshi, member of the Namimori Middle School baseball club, no one important – who actually straightened up, looking indecisive. He, it seemed, had no idea what he'd gotten involved in.

"No one's leaving," Hibari finally said.

And in the end, no one did. Sasagawa bit her lip and straightened her back and then actually grabbed Tsunayoshi's hand in hers. Yamamoto seemed to self reflect for a moment before leaning against the couch with studious casualness. Kurokawa shifted where she sat and then leaned back, arms folded and one leg crossed over the other. Hibari and Kusakabe Tetsuya – Hibari's underling in the Disciplinary Committee – neither of them as much as twitched.

Tsunayoshi met this fairly solitary front with a look of resignation and lowered his eyes.

"Fine," he said, very quiet. "On your own head be it."

 

* * *

 

"Well?" Hibari asked, growing more and more annoyed with this whole mess. "You can start any time, scavenger."

"Hm," Sawada answered and instead of explaining he glanced at Kurokawa. "How did you stay awake?"

"Well… I don't know. I guess I actually didn't – I did lose consciousness for a moment there," Kurokawa answered and Hibari turned his eyes on her. "But then I came to again. The blond man – um, your dad, I guess? He carried us inside the building and laid us all down on the floor, me and those thugs you and Hibari beat the crap out of. He was laying those guys out when I came to – but I couldn't move at all."

"Hm. Alright," Sawada nodded, and looked at her evenly. "What did you see?"

"Actually," the boy behind Sawada said. "Can you please tell the whole story for the rest of the class? What thugs?"

"Yeah, I'd like to know too," Sasagawa said.

Hibari growled at that, beyond annoyed with this whole situation. He wanted to hear _Sawada's_ explanation, nothing else. Though perhaps Kurokawa might have other insights to offer seeing that she was awake… "Sawada and myself agreed to fight yesterday, went to the old part of Namimori to do it, there we encountered a pathetic gang of tugs, and we beat them," Hibari snapped. "Questions?"

"Uh. Loads," the boy behind Sawada said. "Why –"

"Good. Kurokawa, continue."

Kurokawa hesitated a bit, glancing around, first at the boy behind them, then at Sawada who shrugged, and then finally at Hibari and Kusakabe. "Um. Okay, right," she said. "There was a long while where nothing happened, we were just laid out there, all of us unconscious – except me, I guess. Tsuna's dad was pacing along the room a lot, he seemed pretty angry. I don't know how long it took before the other people arrived – there were four of them I think? Yeah, four."

She frowned and lifted her hand. "There was a black man with red hair done up in those braids that are against the scalp," she said, with one finger lifted. "Then there was a brown haired woman with glasses. A boy about our age maybe? And this weird… kid, really young. They all had suits on and stuff. And they all spoke Italian."

"Italian?" Hibari repeated.

"Yeah," Kurokawa shrugged.

"How do you know it was Italian?" Kusakabe asked behind him.

"Well… I recognized it. I've head Tsuna speak it," Kurokawa answered, which made Hibari arch an eyebrow at Sawada, who shrugged in answer. "Anyway, I couldn't understand a word of it – but they all seemed kind of tense. Then, uh… the black man went to do something to Tsuna. He was touching your face a lot."

Hibari scowled at that, but Sawada just shrugged, apparently it having been expected.

"And then that…" Kurokawa stopped, leaning her head back and taking a deep breath. "I didn't imagine it, right?" she asked, turning to Sawada. "That stuff really happened, right – I didn't like… hallucinate it?"

"Just tell us what the hell you saw, herbivore," Hibari growled.

"I don't even _know_ what it was, okay? Give me a freaking break!" Kurokawa snapped back and shifted on her seat uncomfortably. "It was like freaking magic, okay? The black guy pulled stuff out of Tsuna's head – these images, shreds of pictures, I don't even know what the hell it was. They were like floating in the air and then they spread and it was like… like we were transported somewhere else. It sounds so dumb and unbelievable even to me now that I say it out loud, geez."

Hibari scowled at her, ignoring the incredulous mutter Kusakabe let out and the looks Sasagawa exchanged with the unknown-herbivore behind Sawada. Sawada himself, though…

He didn't look at all surprised.

"Then what?" Hibari asked, staring at Sawada, trying to gauge his reaction.

"I don't know," Kurokawa muttered. "It was like a vision – we were suddenly on this ruined street, it was like something out of an old war flick, like a bombed out city. Except it looked like Sixth Street – I recognised some of the store signs, what remained of them. And, uh… there was Tsuna. Except he was… older, I guess."

The longer she went on, explaining the scene of this older, ragged Sawada, wounded and chased by men in white uniforms, the more incredible it sounded. Killing people with throwing knives and machine guns, and then running away from a _tank_? It kind of sounded more like she'd had a fantastic dream than that she'd actually witnessed something real.

Hibari would've thrown her out of the window for outrageous lying and for spinning tales – all against Namimori Middle School code of conduct – except for one thing. Sawada never once looked disbelieving. No, he just looked resigned to the whole tale.

"And then the older Tsuna passed out I guess, and the… vision broke up. And we were back in the abandoned building," Kurokawa finished.

There was a moment of tense silence as everyone just stared at her, everyone but Sawada who was staring at his hands, one of which was still held by Sasagawa.

"Well," Kusakabe muttered behind Hibari. "That's the biggest load of –"

"Is that all?" Hibari asked, glancing at Kurokawa.

"Well. No," she said and glanced at Tsuna. "Tsuna woke up then and, um… do you wanna continue, Tsuna?"

"Just keep going," Tsuna mumbled.

"Well… That weird kid I mentioned questioned Tsuna about the vision, I think, and about… this pacifier thing he was wearing, I didn't get that part," Kurokawa said. "I didn't really get any of it actually. It was about who sent Tsuna here and why, and who the people in the vision were. Sorry, I don't remember the actual questions he asked, or what Tsuna answered. I guess I was too freaked out to pay that much attention.

"Anyway," she continued. "After the kid finished interrogating Tsuna, the people started getting ready to leave I guess – the woman was injecting the thugs with something Tsuna's dad said made them forget, or something. They almost did that to you and me, Hibari, but Tsuna stopped them. On the condition that he went with them without a fight. And he did," she shrugged awkwardly and stared at her hands. "Then they brought us here, and that's it, I guess. I stuck around until the paralysis wore off and then I went home and spent the rest of the day freaking out."

Hibari scowled at her. He'd woken up alone in the reception room – it would've been _appreciated_ if she could've stuck around to explain. But herbivores were herbivores. He turned to Sawada. "And what did you do for them?"

Sawada sighed. "Just… what they wanted me to," he muttered. "They had a brain scan. Probably to confirm what they suspected."

"Which is?"

"That I have memories of the future. I guess stuff like that shows in scans or something, I don't know," Sawada shrugged and looked up. He looked exhausted. "Now I'm basically waiting for what else they want. And because you lot are all idiots, you're involved."

Hibari narrowed his eyes while everyone in the room recoiled a bit from the venomous words. "Really," he said. "And what _precisely_ are we involved in? What is this," he motioned at Kurokawa, "supposed to even _be_?"

"Hell if I know," Sawada sighed. "But give it a few years and it'll destroy humanity as we know it."

There was another moment of tense silence before the guy behind Sawada let out a slight laugh. "So is this like a game or something?" he asked, leaning back a little with a slight smile on his face. "Some sort of role play thing or –"

Sawada glanced at him over his shoulder. "You might still get away," he said thoughtfully, his tone almost comforting. "If you run really fast and go back to what you were before, you might make it."

That stopped the guy on his tracks and he stared at Sawada with surprise.

"Tsuna?" Kurokawa asked, drawing his attention away. "That thing they did – what was that? It wasn't actually magic, right?"

"I have no idea what it is," Sawada answered, turning away from the guy to look at her. "Some people seem to have that power, and there seemed to be different types. I think they're called… Flames, or something. I tried to learn it," he admitted. "But there wasn't really anyone around to teach, back then – back there, where I come from. Only the Millefiore people knew how – everyone else was killed."

"Flames," Hibari repeated slowly, incredulously. "Magical vision educing Flames. I don't believe this."

"That was pretty much spot on, actually," a childish voice interjected from the window and they all turned in alarm to look. There was a child there, sitting on the window sill. "They're called Dying Will Flames," he said with a little smile and tipped his hat. "Ciaossu."


	14. Chapter 14

"With all due respect, you're an idiot."

Iemitsu sighed, leaning his chin on his palm, phone pinned between his ear and shoulder. "Thanks Lal Mirch, your support is, as always, the rock for me to lean on."

"Well, you are," she said mercilessly. "I'm starting to see why you chose to deal with your family the way you have over these years – I admit, I had my doubts about it, but it seems you were indeed choosing the best possible route after all, with a near total lack of any interaction. God forbid what you would've done to your poor family, if you'd actually _stayed_ with them."

"Just tell me what you've found, alright? I'm getting enough of this from Oregano," Iemitsu growled.

"Not nearly enough seeing that you still went and did… pretty much everything you shouldn't have," Lal Mirch answered. "But fine. Here's what I've found out so far. First, the Millefiore. I've found precisely nothing about them."

"Which we figured you would," Iemitsu agreed with a sigh. "So they don't exist yet."

"Probably not. I tried to cover all of my bases, I even tried to track down their uniform design and the possible maker of the tank you saw in Tsunayoshi's memory, with very little luck. Even among those few Families that have adopted a uniform dress code, no one uses pauldrons – and the tank was of an unknown design, possibly by a company that doesn't exist these days. Judging by the symbols on the side, it was probably built by this Millefiore group. The weapon Tsunayoshi used however was a bit simple – and ultimately useless. A MF1 assault riffle, fairly common even these days, used by just about every army on earth."

"Hm," Iemitsu said. "Well, we knew we weren't going to get far on that route. Next?"

"Tsunayoshi's brain scans," Lal Mirch said. "The doctors have been going over them and they confirm the civilian's opinion – Tsunayoshi has an abnormally developed pre-frontal cortex, never mind the overall complexity of his brain isn't that of a normal boy in his age. The scans aren't as clear as they could be, though – possibly an after effect of the Mist Flames in his systems. And naturally we can't actually see actual Flames on civilian scans. Ideally you'd want to get him to a Vongola clinic and have a proper doctor specialised in these things look him over, however…"

"Yeah." Iemitsu grunted and closed his eyes. Try and do it now and it would just hammer more nails into his coffin. As it was, the whole ordeal was becoming more and more sensitive by the moment. "Has word about this gotten out?"

"The Ninth slammed the breaks on it the moment Reborn confirmed that there was a high chance that Tsunayoshi really does have future memories – the spread of information is being slowed down as much as we can. So far only select members of the CEDEF, and Ninth and his Guardians know the full story," Lal Mirch assured him. "However, too many people know already – and we don't know who in Namimori knows. There is no way to keep this under wraps indefinitely. It's going to get out sooner or later – and I'm betting on sooner."

"I'll take that under consideration. Anything else?"

"The Bovino Family," Lal Mirch answered and Iemitsu could hear her taping away at a keyboard. "I've been looking over what files we have about them and been tracking the last months of the family. They were pretty busy at the time – and I can confirm Reborn's account. They were trying to develop a device of temporary time travel – one that would momentarily replace your past self with one from the future. Something about paradoxes and instabilities – their original idea was just grabbing people from future and bringing them into the past to bolster their own forces, but apparently there is some inherent danger in having two of same person in a same place in space and time. So, the Ten Year Bazooka – which, shot at a person, would've switched them with their future self from ten years in the future, was the ultimate goal of their research."

Iemitsu considered that for a moment, thinking back to Tsuna in the vision. He'd looked older, a lot older. Maybe even exactly ten years older. "Did they finish the research?" he asked. Tsuna here wasn't a future version, though. He was the present version – but with future memories. Or that was at least the theory so far.

"Not that I can tell. They were attacked by a rival family a couple years back," Lal Mirch said thoughtfully. "And in the midst of the battle, the Vindice swept in and no one knows much about what happened – just that the Bovino family was wiped out and pretty much all their family research vanished in the resulting clash. So far I've only been able to track down one surviving member – but he won't be much good to anyone, being five years old at the moment."

"Hmm. And the family that attacked them?"

"It's called the Gesso Family," Lal Mirch mused. "I don't have much on them, to be honest. They're a small group, very recently formed – their attack on the Bovino is pretty much the only thing they're known for. I think they did it more for the Bovino family's already present assets, not for their research – judging by the boost in their general influence, they made a nice bit of profit with what they captured in their raid. And since no one much liked the Bovino and they had no allies to speak of…"

Iemitsu grunted, running a hand over his face. He hadn't remember much about the Bovino before Reborn's remark and for a good reason. They'd been something of a running joke for as long as they'd existed. Families like that, small and ambiguous but ultimately too impulsive to control themselves properly, rose and fell every day.

"There is something about the Bovino family's research that I find interesting, however," Lal Mirch continued. "They published a lot of their theories on time, time paradoxes – and alternate realities – online. One of them was about their firm belief that the future wasn't set in stone, and that every change made to the past had an immediate and powerful effect on the future. Butterfly's wings causing storms and all that."

"So… Tsuna might've been sent back not because he has to save the world but because… he's a butterfly flapping his wings, making storms?" Iemitsu asked, with a mirthless little laugh. Tsuna was more of a fish, really, splashing about out of water.

"Isn't he, though?" Lal Mirch asked. "Or what would you call this?"

He didn't answer for a moment, staring instead at the table ahead of him. Then, with a sigh, he took the phone in his hand and straightened his neck, rubbing a hand over it. Tsuna – or Iemitsu himself, because of Tsuna – had caused quite a bit of havoc already. They were researching things they hadn't cared about, looking into things most had forgotten – believing in theories that everyone thought were nonsense before. And this, Iemitsu knew well enough, was just the tip of the iceberg.

They didn't actually know that much about the future yet. Just that Namimori had been mostly destroyed by _something_ called the Millefiore and Tsuna had survived – and then sent back in time with that knowledge. Chances were they'd learn more soon – and that knowledge would send even bigger waves.

Tuna-Fish was causing Tsunamis.

"This is ten years before the future," Lal Mirch said. "All it might take is nudging the right person in the wrong direction to stop everything from happening. But if Tsuna might be willing to give out actual names, something we can correlate in this time – say… the leaders of the Millefiore maybe?" she trailed off meaningfully. "Then there is a very easy way to put an end to it right here and now, isn't there?"

"Well. Who knows if it will be that simple – the people who run the group in the future might not be the people who started it in… the past of the future," Iemitsu sighed. He was going to have so many headaches about this, he just knew. "But I'll try to ask. Somehow. Without making the situation worse in the mean while."

"My advice to you, _sir,_ would be that you just don't," Lal Mirch said. "Leave it to Reborn, see what he comes up with. Funnily enough he has lot more experience with troubled teenagers than you do."

"To Reborn?" Iemitsu asked. "What's he got to do with this?"

"Didn't you know? He's been stalking your kid all day. I'm tracking him on the cameras you placed - I think he just busted in on Tsuna and some of the other students of Namimori. Kind of seems like he's giving them a lecture."

Iemitsu froze for a moment. No, he hadn't known that actually. He'd thought Reborn had just left with Croquant – though, true enough, he wasn't sure about Croquant either. He'd gotten so wrapped up in Tsuna that he hadn't even checked. "God damnit," Iemitsu growled. "What's he doing? And what do you mean he has more experience than I do – I _trained_ Basil, remember? He turned out okay."

"Basil is a nice obedient kid who worships the ground you walk on and thinks every word you say is the word of God. Tsuna is a nervous, paranoid wreck who thinks you're holding him prisoner," Lal Mirch said mercilessly. "Reborn on other hand is… Reborn," she said and he could hear her shrug. "And he's interested in Tsunayoshi. You might as well let him do his thing. God knows he can't do a worse job than you already have."

 

* * *

 

"And that, in nutshell, is what Dying Will Flames are," Reborn finished, waving a hand at the Leon-turned-into-a-black-board where he had the seven types and their characteristics and attributes outlined simply, paired with drawings of stick figures applying the Flames in various ways. "Any questions?"

His audience, consisting of six teenagers of various stages of uncertainty, incredulity and injury, stared at him wordlessly from the two couches where they'd all sat down to listen. He'd tried to keep all of them on board the explanation as well as he could, but teaching _classes_ wasn't really his thing – he was much better one on one. But he _thought_ they'd all at least listened. Understanding was a different thing, though.

Tsunayoshi was the only one _really_ into the explanation. He was leaning forward and his eyes gleamed with his inner Flames – he wasn't just following, he actively was memorising everything, probably using his Flames to actually imprint every word and drawing in his brain. It would explain the careful detail of the memory Croquant had pulled up – Tsunayoshi had developed a version of eidetic memory with his subconscious, inward Flame usage. It was a very interesting little technique – and had probably helped keep the kid alive in his future, if it was as bad as it seemed… except it wasn't a technique. The kid didn't even know he was doing it.

There were a lot of very interesting things you could do with it, though, if it could be developed into a technique.

The obvious _second in command_ of the group was a little less blatant with his interest – but Hibari was almost uncannily attuned to Tsunayoshi, and had in the end automatically followed his lead. When Tsunayoshi had taken Reborn seriously, Hibari had followed.  He was now looking at Reborn down his nose with the slight frown on his face, but he wasn't outwardly disbelieving and was digesting the info silently. So, some progress there.

The relationship between Hibari and Tsunayoshi was interesting. Reborn kind of wanted to poke at it with a stick.

The next most interested was naturally Kurokawa Hana, who had actual experience with Flames. She'd been mentally applying Reborn's explanations to what she'd seen and for the whole of the Mist Section she'd been nodding in realisation. Smart kid, this one. Never mind very interesting – she had some sort of mental resistance to Flames. Another thing Reborn couldn't wait to poke at a bit.

Of the rest, only Kusakabe Tetsuya was taking the explanation seriously – he'd started taking notes after a while in his book and had written pretty much everything down. Good with rolling with the punches – probably the effect of hanging around someone like Hibari. Sasagawa Kyoko was confused and alarmed and trying to hang onto the explanation but she didn't have the same proof the others had, or the same base to spring from – so she was taking everything at face value but she didn't really get it yet. And Yamamoto… well.

"I have a question," Yamamoto said, holding a hand up and grinning. "Whose kid are you and how did you get here and why are you dressed like that?"

Reborn threw a piece of chalk at him and while the boy recoiled with a yelp, he turned to Tsunayoshi. "Any actual questions?"

"I'm with Yamamoto, actually," Tsunayoshi said, though his expression was far more serious. "Who are you?"

"Yeah? You were there with Tsuna's weird dad – he's the kid who interrogated Tsuna," Kurokawa said. "It was just was weird as this is."

Reborn threw a chalk at her too, and as she yelped in outrage he cleared his throat. "I am Reborn, the greatest hitman in the world," he said with some well deserved pride and hopped onto the table between the two couches were the kids were all now sitting. "I occasionally work for the same group your father does," he added, turning to Tsuna. "Your father's Boss, the Ninth Head of Vongola family, or _Vongola Nono_ , sent me here to see if you were going to be a threat to the family."

Tsunayoshi blinked at that. "You were sent here to kill me?" he asked.

Reborn pressed his lips together. That wasn't an entirely comforting leap of logic to make so quickly. Correct, maybe, but not at all comforting coming out so calmly and easily from the mouth of someone so young outwardly. Was this what it felt like when people were taken in by Reborn's appearance – and then thrown by his words?

"Basically yes," Reborn agreed.

"But… you're just a kid?" Sasagawa said, confused – and then quickly held up her hands in surrender when Reborn turned to her with the chalk. "Never mind, I didn't say anything."

"Tch. This is stupid. I will bite you to death," Hibari muttered, reaching for his tonfa. Reborn threw a bit of chalk at him as well. It was turning out to be a very convenient bit of chalk.

Tsunayoshi shook his head at them and looked at Reborn. "Why would I be a threat to the… Vongola?" he asked, and then frowned in concentration. "I know that name from somewhere…"

"You're in the line of succession – you're the direct descendant of one of the Vongola's founding members. And you're Iemitsu's son and though he can be an idiot, he's not a nobody. After the Ninths' sons, you're the next in line to inherit the Vongola family," Reborn answered and pointed a chalk at him. "When your father went and threw everything completely out of proportion, it was for a reason. All the enemies of the Vongola need is you handily mind controlled and the Ninth's sons assassinated, and they get control of the most powerful family on earth. You suddenly getting a personality transplant isn't exactly a small issue for them."

Tsunayoshi blinked at that. "Huh," he said and leaned back. "So that's where I know it from."

"Well I've never heard of it," Kurokawa said, rubbing at her forehead and glaring at Reborn. "The most powerful family on earth my ass –"

Reborn waved the chalk at her and she quickly fell silent. He turned to Tsunayoshi. "How do you know the Vongola?"

"From the public executions," the kid shrugged. "It was one of the things the Millefiore did early on, before the bombings started. Lots and lots of public executions. For the Vongola ones I think they hijacked like a dozen news networks world-wide. I didn't really know the importance then, though."

Reborn took a moment to digest that and then looked away. Well. That's what happened to the Vongola, then. Summarily executed on day time television. Damn. "So you never knew you had a connection to them in the future?" he asked slowly.

Tsunayoshi shrugged. "I didn't know much anything. Probably better I didn't know, or I would've been executed too. Not that they didn't try…" he mused and met his eyes steadily. "So Iemitsu is part of the Vongola?"

"He's the head of the Vongola's external advisory, the Consulenza Esterna Della Famiglia, or CEDEF," Reborn explained. "And I understand he's kept you and your mother at bay as protection or some other nonsense."

"And you?" Tsuna asked, watching him with eyes gleaming. "You work for the Vongola, too?"

"Occasionally, on a contract basis. My contract was to estimate your level of threat to the Vongola," the hitman admitted. "Which is in part what I'm doing here. And the other part is neutralising the potential danger."

"By telling us everything," Tsunayoshi said, his tone a bit incredulous.

"There's nothing more dangerous than a bunch of teenagers acting on conjecture and misinformation," Reborn snorted. "The greatest threat you pose to the Vongola right now is by knowing _too little_ and making your own assumptions. So I am informing you."

There was a moment of silence as Tsunayoshi digested that and the other kids exchanged looks. It still hadn't sunken in with all of them, and not a single one of them actually trusted him. But they seemed a bit more willing to listen and maybe even believe him. Which was something at least.

"So, to recap," Kusakabe spoke out, leafing through his notebook. He had the look of a man – or boy – who had no idea what he was doing but was going to do it anyway. "Sawada came back from the future and his altered behaviour alarmed his father. Who then… accidentally called a hit out on him?" he made a face. "Which in light of Sawada's future memories wasn't actually executed. And now no one knows what to do and you're here to break the ice."

Reborn eyed him with surprise. Well that was unexpected. "Iemitsu called for a CEDEF investigation, asking assistance from the Vongola Nono's Guardian of Mist… which then turned into an interrogation – the Ninth called the hit, but only if necessary," he clarified.

"Right," Kusakabe said and wrote it down with a scowl while Hibari beside him folded his arms and scowled at _everything_. Tsunayoshi was rubbing a hand over his forehead and as for the rest – there were those exchanged glances going on.

For such a randomly thrown-together bunch, they were already pretty tightly knitted together. Even Yamamoto who seemed to have _stumbled_ his way in was already part of the group. It was rather fascinating. And it was very telling.

"You're here for some other reason, though," Kurokawa said. "No way are you here just to tell us this stuff – hell. You shouldn't be telling _us_ this stuff. You should be telling it to just _Tsuna,_ not all of us."

Reborn smiled at her slightly. "Well," he said and tugged at the brim of his hat. "You're an interesting little group," he said and looked at Tsunayoshi. "See there's a Sky Flame here," he said pointing at Iemitsu's kid whose eyes narrowed. "And then there's Cloud," he pointed at Hibari Kyoya. "Sun," at Sasagawa Kyoko. "Mist," at Kurokawa Hana. "Rain," at Yamamoto Takeshi. "And Lightning," at Kusakabe Tetsuya. "All you guys are missing is Storm and you're a full set."

They stared at him, some in shock, others in disbelief or scorn – and Tsunayoshi in flat suspicion. Reborn smiled at them. What a bunch of brats. "Tsunayoshi seems to be pulling together a Guardian group," he said. "And I'm pretty interested in seeing where this is going."


	15. Chapter 15

Tsuna followed a few steps after Reborn.

The… not-child had jumped up to walk on the wall separating the walkway from the private yards, and was quietly humming to himself as he trotted along, no care in the world. Tsuna glanced at him every now and then, and then looked away. Everything about Reborn _unsettled_ him. Even when toddling ever so slightly, Reborn moved like an adult. Every instinct Tsuna had was screaming how dangerous he was. And at the same time… he looked like a kid.

A kid who'd happily threatened to kill everyone in the reception room if they breathed a word of what they'd learned to anyone.

Tsuna lowered his eyes, squeezing the strap of his backpack tightly. He didn't get this, he didn't get _any_ of this. The past had been throwing confusing stuff at him ever since the start, but this was too much. Iemitsu, the Vongola, everything – and now Reborn, who was… whatever the hell he even was. The Flames and their attributes, his… friends, and their apparent affinities – his own affinity. Which was, apparently, pulling the others in – because that was the attribute of Sky. Harmony with others.

What a laugh. Tsuna had never been in harmony with _anything_ for as long as he could remember.

Just what did Reborn think he was about to become – what they, everyone from Hibari to Yamamoto, were about to become? Part of this… Vongola that they knew next to nothing about, which Tsuna only knew as that organisation that the Millefiore had been so _gleefully_ happy to butcher? At first Tsuna had thought the supposed greatest hitman in the world was just after his knowledge about the future – but Reborn had barely asked anything. Only thing he'd questioned Tsuna about was the Vongola, and Flames. Like somehow… that was more important. What Tsuna knew and thought about them.

Still. At least he now knew something. Tsuna was so tired of not knowing these things, and whatever alternative motives Reborn had aside… at least he knew something.

"We're here," Reborn said, and jumped down from the wall. Tsuna looked up with trepidation – there was his mother's house, sitting ahead of them.

"Iemitsu is here," he said quietly.

"You can sense that all the way from here?" Reborn asked, peering up at him. "That's useful," he mused and tilted his head to the side a bit. "How do you do it? Do you see him, hear him? Feel him?"

Tsuna shrugged, shaking his head. "All of the above, I guess," he said and looked down. "And I can feel him looking at us from the window."

"Very useful," Reborn nodded more to himself than to Tsuna and then looked ahead. "Don't worry about him, Tsunayoshi. I'll deal with Iemitsu."

"How?"

Reborn smiled a little and lifted his hand to the chameleon idling on top of his hat. The lizard slowly took to his hand, curling around his fingers. "With the cunning use of higher firepower," he said, and the chameleon changed shapes. "Just sit back and relax, Tsunayoshi. This won't take long at all."

 

* * *

 

Kyoko sat on her knees on the wooden flooring of the gym, listening with only half an ear how her brother expounded on the importance of training and motivation and how no one got stronger by skipping practice. Which she'd accidentally done, when she'd gotten… side tracked in the reception room. Honestly, though, she couldn't hear half of the words Ryohei was saying.

Bits and pieces of everything she'd learned kept playing over and over in her head in a disjointed order and she couldn't make sense of it. Tsuna and… and the future, and Reborn who was apparently a hitman – and Flames and Guardians and public executions. "And, just so you know, if you breathe a word of this to anyone outside this room, I will have to kill you," Reborn had said to them, smiling brightly.

It would've been a lot less believable if Tsuna hadn't been so still and tense beside her. Hibari had seemed to take it seriously too. And Hana…

Hana had just grit her teeth.

"Kyoko!" Ryohei snapped at her and she lifted her head with a small _eep_ of surprise. "Are you even listening to me? This is extremely important!"

"Sorry, sorry!" she said, drawing her shoulders up a little. "I'm a bit – my mind's elsewhere, I'm sorry."

"Shoulders," Ryohei said, tapping one of them with his fist, and Kyoko promptly let them fall. It was one of her biggest mistakes so far, holding her shoulders wrong – it took away a lot of the power of her stances, having her shoulders tensed improperly. Ryohei sighed. "What's up, little sis?" he asked and plopped down to sit in front of her. "You and Hana get into a fight or something?"

"No, that's… that's not it," Kyoko muttered and looked down at her knees. She couldn't tell him – as ridiculous as the idea that a child could be a hitman was, well. Tsuna was connected to something. And that something had knocked him, Hana and _Hibari_ out cold, apparently. And Tsuna, he… he didn't seem like a guy that got easily worried, not these days. Or well… not outside supermarkets anyway.

She kind of had a feeling now why he'd been so freaked out by bread though. It kind of left her feeling cold inside, thinking about it now.

Kyoko sighed and bowed her head before shifting into a slightly easier position on the floor, crossing her feet in her lap. "Hey, Ryohei. If you had a friend in, um… in like real trouble, really serious stuff. You'd help them, right?" she asked.

He looked for a moment as if he wanted to make his usual grand standing, _extreme_ speech, but instead he folded his arms and frowned at her. "Is this about Sawada?"

Kyoko leaned back a little in surprise. "How'd you know?" she asked in alarm.

"What other seriously troubled friends do you have?" he asked with a shake of his head. "Hana's too smart to get into trouble and in the meantime Sawada gets into fights with _Hibari_. It's not exactly rocket science. What's he gotten into?"

She shrugged. "Not my place to say," she admitted with a sigh. "But it's… hm," she hesitated, not sure how to put it. "It's pretty serious and I guess I could… I'm in a special position to help him, kind of?" she said, scratching at her cheek. "We'll it's not just me, there's other people too, but…"

She trailed off, not really sure how to put it. She hadn't paid enough attention to the relationships between Guardians but she'd at least gotten the idea that a Sky Flame was the central point for the rest, somehow. Tsuna was a Sky – she was a Sun. Which, aside from sounding all poetic and stuff, meant something. Something serious. Sun, Rain, Cloud and all the rest – they were things that existed _in the sky_. And she figured that with them around, the sky… was stronger.

Tsuna was… she didn't know how to put it into words. Shaky, was the best word she had for the feeling she got from Tsuna. Like he was never sure of his ground, always balancing and teetering on the edge of falling over. But he hadn't been that so much _lately_. Something had evened out the ground beneath his feet.

Maybe it was just Tsuna getting used to… being in the past. But she was sure she hadn't imagined it, back in the reception room. Since Tsuna had _changed_ and become this other thing, she'd never seen him so relaxed. Especially not when there were so many people around him. Never once had Tsuna looked nervous in the reception room and there was something special about that.

Ryohei looked at her gravely. "Well… do you want to help him?" he asked.

"Yeah," Kyoko admitted miserably. Tsuna was weird and kind of miserable at times and oh so _worrisome_. But he was a friend. And Hana was a friend. And she thought that maybe she could be friends with Hibari too, since Tsuna obvious got along with him. Maybe Kusakabe too, though he made her feel kind of tiny. And there was Yamamoto too…

"Is it dangerous?" Ryohei asked seriously.

"Maybe?" Kyoko asked and winced. "Probably." Definitely.

"Hm," Ryohei hummed and closed his eyes, lips pressed into a grim, thoughtful line. Then he hopped to his feet. "I ain't making your decisions for you, sis," he said. "Standing up for your friends, that's something only you can do. You need to decide for yourself if they're worth it."

Kyoko's shoulders slumped miserably at that.

"But if you ask me?" Ryohei said. "If it's dangerous, then you just need to get extremely strong so you can beat it, whatever it is. You know?"

Kyoko blinked at that and looked up at him. He was holding a hand out to her. "You missed practice," he said with a solemn look. "So let's get to it. And hell, if nothing else, beating up a punching bag ought to make you feel better. Yeah?"

Kyoko swallowed and took a deep breath and grabbed his hand. "Yeah. Let's train."

 

* * *

 

Kusakabe went idly over his notes while Hibari paced along the room, this close to spitting in agitation. It was really kind of funny how ruffled Hibari became the angrier he got – though Kusakabe was pretty sure he was one of the few people who ever got to see it. Hibari was usually much more composed than this.

But the usual way of things didn't normally include people like Sawada and this… Reborn character.

Shaking his head, he leafed through the pages. What had started with a carefully selected list of questions intended for figuring out what exactly was the problem with Sawada's home life had turned into a mismash of notes on Flames and the Vongola family. He'd already read it over a couple of times and even added a few things in which he'd later remembered – and of course, every Flame type was marked with corresponding person, barring Storm.

"Go over the Sky again," Hibari said after a moment.

Kusakabe sighed and leafed back to the first one. "Its attribute is Harmony," he started and rattled off the whole bullet point list of it – which, in the end, didn't actually say all that much about it. Theoretically the user harmonised with their surroundings and with the Flames of others, which was why the Sky Flames were the focal point, neither competing with nor repelling other Flames, but combining with them. A Sky Flame could make all other Flames stronger – and in turn, it could use all other Flames to make itself stronger. Users usually applied it in bursts, though like all other Flames it could also be used inwardly to enhance the body.

Which, Kusakabe mused, was why Sky Flames were the leaders of Guardian groups. If this stuff was even real."That's not like Sawada at all," Hibari grumbled, chewing on it for a moment and then looking at him. "What do you think?"

"Hm," Kusakabe answered, scratching at his chin. "Well. Maybe. But maybe not." He'd been looking a lot into Sawada's history lately and some of the things about it… "Before all this started, Sawada was always pretty good about blending into his surroundings – and even so, people couldn't leave him alone. I've been wondering about that, actually. He was a nobody, and not in any way interesting, not even worthy of being bullied – his reactions are boring and he isn't funny. But people could never leave him alone. There was always a crowd around him."

A crowd of discontented people complaining at him about every little thing, no matter how big or small. Kusakabe had been asking about it, and for most part people couldn't actually remember any major failing of Sawada's that actually earned him the No-Good title. He was bad in classes, yes, but so was Yamamoto, a fairly popular kid in Sawada's class. Sawada wasn't particularly athletic, but so weren't many other people in the school. He wasn't outwardly noticeable, he wasn't annoying, or loud, he didn't call for attention in any way. Aside from the hair maybe he was pretty boring actually. Sawada was nothing remarkable.

And yet for as long as he'd been at Namimori Middle School, people had literally never once stopped making remarks about him. It's like subconsciously everyone expected him to be something great and special – and then were disappointed and angry when he failed to live up to their expectations.

A Sky Flame… might explain it.

"Sawada calls for attention," Kusakabe said. "Everywhere he goes and no matter what he does, people notice him. Even when they don't want to, it still happens."

"Hm," Hibari answered, scowling at the floor. Kusakabe turned to the notebook to hide his smirk. Hibari was the best example of that, actually. Ever since the start, Hibari hadn't been able to ignore Sawada at all. But then… since Sawada had changed, neither had anyone else.

"If this Flame stuff is real, then Sawada is probably already using them somehow," Kusakabe said. "He's become… more lately." More what, he didn't know, but there was _more_ of it.

"Hm," Hibari answered again, this time in begrudging agreement. He lifted his good arm, and made an almost casual swing with his new tonfa over the open air. "Cloud Flame is Propagation," he muttered and made another swing. "Things escalated when I got into contact with Sawada."

Kusakabe looked at him in surprise and then considered it. "They did," he agreed then. And they had done it pretty fast too. He kind of regretted not making notes of Sawada's progress in those couple of first days – there had been a change there, which he now felt he'd missed completely.

Making a thoughtful hum, Kusakabe looked at his notes. "Sasagawa was the first, probably," he said as he opened the page on Sun Flames. "Sun is Activation. Strengthening and healing too. Probably helped Sawada settle, somewhat. Then there was you, Propagation – the escalation of the effect, whatever the effect was. Kurokawa with Mist – Construction, usually used for illusions but… I think in this case it probably helped establish this whole thing into something more real."

"This is _ridiculous_ ," Hibari muttered and swung his tonfa again. "First of _what_? What the hell is this even supposed to be?"

Kusakabe shrugged, eying his notes. Himself and Yamamoto – Lightning and Rain, Hardening and Tranquillity – were the last and they were still on the fringes of the core group made by Sawada, Sasagawa, Hibari and Kurokawa. Things would probably change if they… joined whatever was happening. Which he was still not entirely sure was even for real. But if the Flames were for real, then Yamamoto and him were proof of the effect this stuff was having – Sawada's so called _pull_ was probably getting stronger.

"So," he said and lowered the notebook. "Now what, boss?"

Hibari glanced at him and swung his tonfa again before snapping it smoothly into place along his forearm. He lowered his arm and glared at the windows. "Sawada is going to go ahead with this. He's going to learn from that kid…" he said then and mused on it for a moment before glancing at him. "What about you?"

"I follow you, Boss," Kusakabe shrugged. "And for the record, I'm not sure I believe any of this shit yet. But I follow you."

Hibari just eyed him for a moment before shaking his head. "Tch," he said and swung the tonfa again.

 

* * *

 

"Hey, wait - Kurokawa!"

Hana stopped in mid step and looked over her shoulder. Yamamoto was running towards her, gasping for breath. "Geez, you're fast!" he said with a grin. "You did track once, right? We should have a race sometime!"

"What do you want, Yamamoto?" Hana asked uncomfortably. She's wanted to walk around a bit, get her thoughts straight about… about all the stuff she'd learned, and what it all really meant. That's why she'd refused to wait for Kyoko and why she'd taken the long way home – to get a moment to think and adjust her world view into a frame that now included supernatural freaking _Flames_.

"Just… I dunno, everyone kinda just walked off and Hibari looked like he was about to bite me," Yamamoto shrugged. "And I really need to ask _somebody_."

"Ask what?" Hana asked, giving him a look. "About what game we're playing? You still going on about that?"

"Well," the guy hesitated, scratching at the side of his neck awkwardly. Then he let out an awkward little laugh. "I think I ran into the wrong crowd, huh?" he then said, desperately trying to make light of it. It was kind of ridiculous. "Um, so, really. What's going on?"

Hana opened her mouth to tell him flat out that he was an idiot, but sighed instead. "Hell if I know," she muttered and ran a hand over her hair, looking around them. It was a beautiful day, all sunny and bright, and everything seemed to glow golden and new in the sunlight. Wide open streets and perfectly maintained yards and houses with perfect paint and unbroken windows.

And all she could see was everything bombed to hell, with buildings broken like so much torn cardboard, with grass growing out of craters, with rusting cars lying every which way, with trash and rubble everywhere. It had looked so cold, Tsuna's future. It had looked freezing and grey and horrible.

The weird thing was, the one thing she remembered the best was how bright Tsuna's blood had been on the broken pavement when he'd run and run and run through the ruins.

Yamamoto looked at her weirdly, his head tilted to the side. "You okay?" he asked quietly.

"No, not really," Hana muttered. "I get that you don't believe this, but I _saw_ it, I saw it happen – I saw the Flames and what they could do, I saw the future, it's all so freaking real and I can't put it out of my mind for one damn minute and now we're involved in this and apparently I have the same damn type of Flame that made the future appear like that, and –"

That was kind of the one thing that freaked her out the most. The black man had been a Mist Guardian and he'd used Mist Flames to crack Tsuna's mind open like it was a freaking picture book. And she had that type of Flame too – Mist Flames, Construction, illusion. Did that mean that she'd do stuff like that too, break into people's minds and just…

"Hey," Yamamoto said, touching her shoulder – and then quickly drawing his hand back when she rounded angrily on him. "Whoa, geez, chill!" he said, backing up a bit. "It's just – we're pretty close to my dad's place. He owns a sushi restaurant – I get a damn good discount. And you kinda look like you need something to eat."

Hana stared at him with disbelief. "Like I need something to eat?" she repeated slowly.

"Eating good food makes me feel better about stuff," he shrugged and gave her a sheepish grin. "So. How about a snack and then we go over this whole thing again but… maybe a bit slower?" he offered and something about his face sharpened. "All this Flame stuff bears a second look."

For a moment Hana just stared at him. His was the Rain Flame, she recalled. Tranquillity. It had had a weirdly sinister ring to it when Reborn had spoken about it, which she hadn't paid that much attention to at the time, but now…

"You know what," she said. "I could use a bite to eat."

 

* * *

 

"Reborn, what the hell?!" Iemitsu demanded while narrowly avoiding being hit. "For crying out loud – stop that!"

Reborn smiled and aimed. "Only if you agree to leave Tsunayoshi in my hands, and let me make him my student," he said and squeezed the trigger slowly. "As it is I've already told him too much, and he can't be left without a proper teacher – he can only do damage to himself and others unless he's properly trained. And you're certainly not fit to teach him. So just hand him over to me, and I will stop."

"Reborn, don't you _dare_ –"

Reborn pulled the trigger properly and Iemitsu was hit with another splash of ice water from his green spray bottle. Listening with great satisfaction to the head of the CEDEF yowl like an affronted cat, the world's greatest hitman aimed for another shot.

"It's really the best for everyone. It'll take the problem neatly off your hands, and off Nono's mind – he trusts me enough to handle this neatly. Tsunayoshi will be protected and no outside influence can get to him. And I can safely extract his knowledge about the future without you ruining what's left of your peaceful family life," he said and peered down the top of the spray bottle. "You just need to agree."

"But why do you even _care_?!" Iemitsu demanded. "The last time you trained someone, it was the future boss of the Cavallone Family – Tsuna might be in the line of succession but – stop it! Alright, alright, I give, just stop freaking spraying me – what the hell is even in that thing, it feels like acid."

Reborn smiled but didn't lower the bottle. It probably was. Leon could be vicious like that. "Tsunayoshi is interesting," he said simply. And he was. So interesting that the Sky Arcobaleno of the future had taken special care to preserve his future knowledge. Iemitsu had problems with comprehending that because he refused to see Tsunayoshi as anything other than as his son whom he'd failed. And even if he saw beyond that, the next thing he'd see Tsunayoshi as was a resource to be carefully applied where useful.

Reborn saw neither. What he saw was the fact that of all the people in the future… the Sky Arcobaleno of those years had chosen Tsunayoshi. It had to be for a reason beyond his connection to the Vongola, or his knowledge. Someone very special, Aria had said.

And Reborn was going to find out just how special Tsunayoshi really was.

"So?" he asked and aimed the spray bottle at Iemitsu's face. "Do you agree to leave Tsunayoshi in my hands?"

Iemitsu glared at him. "What do you get out of it?"

Reborn pulled the trigger.


	16. Chapter 16

Nana hugged herself quietly by the doorway while Iemitsu got ready to leave.

Of course she'd known it would happen – it always did. Iemitsu never stayed longer than a couple of days before he had to return back to work. That was just the way it was. And usually she was pretty satisfied with that because normally while he was there, he was _there_ and with _her_. This time it hadn't been like that – his mind had constantly been elsewhere and of course… there was Tsuna.

"Is everything alright now?" Nana asked quietly. Because she wasn't sure it was. She didn't know who the strange kid in a hat was or why he had such an impact on Iemitsu, she didn't know why the kid was staying while her husband was leaving – she didn't know how that resolved anything, if it even did. And Tsuna… Tsuna hadn't seemed improved. He'd shield away from Iemitsu after entering and just hid himself away in his room, with the strange kid.

"It will be," Iemitsu said, looking over the clothing he was packing away before lifting his eyes and looking up at her. "Reborn will be… a good influence on Tuna-fish, probably," he said then and smiled, rising up and walking towards her. "No need to look so sad, darling, it will be alright."

Nana forced a smile and leaned against the hand he'd laid against her cheek. She wasn't so sure, but she could hope. She was very good at hope. "Is Tsuna alright, then?" she asked worriedly, casting a glance towards the stairs leading upstairs.

"He's… a changed man," Iemitsu said with a grin that didn't quite reach his eyes and then sighed, reaching to place a kiss on her forehead. "He's a little shaken up right now, but I think he will be alright. You need to be patient with him while he settles into his bones again, but I think it will be fine. Just give it time."

Nana frowned a little at that, could feel herself pouting. "But why _isn't_ he alright now?" She asked a little petulantly. "What happened to him, why is he… why is he so strange? Iemitsu –"

He swooped in to smack a gentle little kiss on her pouting lips, before nudging his nose gently against hers. "He's seen some things I think he wishes he hadn't," he said, his powerful arms coming around her. "And he doesn't know how to deal with that. Reborn will help him with that." He promised and hugged her tightly. "Just be patient with him."

Nana frowned but it was hard to stay worried in his arms – and after a while, she relaxed a little, her arms climbing up his back to grip the back of his shirt. "I wish you weren't going away so soon," she muttered against his chest. "You're always going away."

"I know, I'm sorry. My work's important, and right now… I think Tuna-fish needs me gone more than anything," Iemitsu said and then pressed his lips against her ear. "But I'll be back – and I'll write you so many letters you'll get sick of them, I'll call every day and every night and whisper evil little nothings into your ear, I'll –"

Nana squirmed a little as he pressed closer, his voice growing deeper – it was just as effective now as it had been years ago, when they'd first met. Soon she was giggling breathlessly, flushed up to the roots of her hair. "Weren't you leaving?" she gasped out, trying to elbow him to get away from his teasing. "Stop it, honey!"

Iemitsu leaned back a little and grinned at her. "There it is," he said with great satisfaction and brushed a thumb over her lips. "Your smile is still the brightest thing in the sky, Nana, and it always will be."

"My smile isn't even in the sky, you silly man," she said, feeling a little like fanning herself. She didn't and instead touched his chin. "I'll miss you, honey."

"I'll miss you more," he promised, and kissed her full on the lips.

Half an hour later, he was gone like he always was, leaving behind not a sign of himself. Nana stood alone in the kitchen for a little while, basking both in the last lingering fragments of his cologne, and in the knowledge that it would be at least another few lonely months before she'd see him again. That was the way of things with Iemitsu.

Well. At least like this there was no way either of them would ever bore of each other. Still… she couldn't help but wish…

Nana shook herself and slapped herself lightly across the cheeks. "Get a grip, girl," she said and then amended. "You're a full grown woman, act like it." With that done, she straightened her back, took a deep breath, and settled into the idea of being alone again. Alone, except for a strange son and…

What was Reborn, actually? Everything had gone by so fast she hadn't quite gotten an explanation for it.

After a moment of considering it, Nana headed up the stairs, to check on the two. The door to Tsuna's room was cracked open slightly, and through the crack she could see Tsuna sitting on the floor with his feet crossed in his lap, frowning at the strange kid who was sitting just a little ways from him, facing him. And… that was strange. Nana hadn't seen Reborn bringing any luggage, but he'd changed his clothes and was now wearing a very traditional looking yukata.

"What are we doing?" Tsuna asked, sounding a little petulant.

"We're drinking tea," Reborn answered, and that was indeed what they were doing – both had cups in hand, Reborn's being quite a deal smaller than Tsuna's. Beside him he had an old fashioned tea set, the sort you used for proper tea ceremonies and stuff. It was all a little strange. Where had they even gotten it? Nana certainly had nothing of the sort around the house.

"Why are we drinking tea?" Tsuna demanded, frowning at his cup. It was steaming.

"It soothes the spirit," Reborn answered calmly, and took a small sip of his. He let out a satisfied sigh. "Go on, take a sip."

"… I thought you were going to train me," Tsuna muttered, but took a slow sip. He blinked and his shoulders slumped a little, a conflicted look on his face as he considered the tea. Then he took another sip.

"There we go," the strange kid said happily. "And I am. Once you learn how to relax. You're so tense I could use you as a spring."

"…I am relaxed," Tsuna muttered.

Reborn just snorted at that.

Nana leaned against the wall for a moment, just watching them. Tsuna was very tense, even she could see that – and he had been that way for a little while now. She doubted very much that just having a cup of tea would help him relax. And what was that about Reborn teaching Tsuna? He was just a kid, wasn't he? Or was it just Tsuna humouring him – were they playing a game?

It was kind of cute, though, whatever it was.

"While I'm here, I thought I'd take a look at your school records," Reborn said after a while and then, somehow, pulled a whole swathe of papers from under his yukata. "Never mind, I already did – and you're failing all your classes judging by the looks of it."

Tsuna grunted in annoyance and didn't say anything.

Reborn leafed through the papers idly. "You were failing your classes before and you're still failing them now. Which is it – do you have problems concentrating or do you just not know the stuff?" he waited for Tsuna to answer and when he didn't, the little child shrugged "Well, it will be another thing I'll be taking a proper look into. In time we'll see if you can do better."

"… Does it matter?" Tsuna asked. "This school stuff, does it _really_ matter?"

Reborn considered that for a moment and then set the papers down. "I guess you wouldn't think it did. Let's put it this way, Tsunayoshi," he said. "You're in a ruined city, and you don't have any drinking water. You find some in a puddle, but you don't know if it's good to drink. What do you do?"

Tsuna narrowed his eyes. "Do I have any supplies?"

"Let's say you have what you usually would have. The normal stuff you'd try to keep in stock."

"Then I'd run it through whatever filter I had at hand and boil it. And if I had enough to store for later, I'd add a bit of bleach."

Nana blinked at that, nor entirely sure what to make of the answer. Or the question. Just what on earth?

"Why?" Reborn asked, peering at Tsuna blankly.

"Because… it cleans it up?"

"Why does it clean it up?"

"I don't know – it just does?" Tsuna asked, sounding a little annoyed. "A filter gets rid of most of the gunk, and boiling kills the stuff in it and a bit of bleach keeps it from going bad if it's stored for long. I don't know why, it just does."

Reborn nodded. "Do you know what all of that is, though?"

"What?"

"It's chemistry and biology. Also geology, ecology, and biochemistry depending on where you got the water and what's in it," Reborn said. "With a bit of home economics thrown in. Some of which," he added, patting the stack of papers, "are classes you're failing at."

 Tsuna blinked at that and stared at the papers. "Huh," he said dully. "I… didn't know that. That it was chemistry and biology and stuff, that's a bit weird."

"Yep, you'd be surprised how much chemistry you've probably been using along the years," Reborn agreed "How about another example? You're in a ruined city and you have only, say, fourteen cans of food, and you need to survive on them for, let's say, the next week," Reborn said. "You have unlimited clean water. Can you survive?"

"What kind of cans?" Tsuna asked suspiciously. "Noodles, fruit, meat, what? How big are they?"

"Let's say it's mostly meat, maybe some fish, half a kilo each."

"Then yeah, I could survive – I could survive a _month_ with that much food…"

Nana smiled slightly to herself as Tsuna begun to slowly relax as he explained his strange little survival strategies in imaginary ruined cities. It kind of seemed like he was having fun, even, which was something she hadn't seen him have in a while. Turning around, she cautiously snuck away and back downstairs, not wanting to disturb them.

Maybe Iemitsu was right. Maybe having little Reborn around would be good for Tsuna after all. She couldn't say she got it, really but… Tsuna had certainly seemed livelier than he'd been in a while. And that was something.

 

* * *

 

That night, Tsuna couldn't sleep. Though it had been almost unnervingly easy to get used to having Reborn around in the day time, it was… not so easy to have him around when it was night. The constant feeling of having someone there in the room with him was unnerving and even the fact that he was exhausted didn't stop him from tensing at every breath and shift and sound that didn't come from himself.

He'd only just gotten used to sharing a _house_ with his mom, and even that had left him waking up at every strange sound. This was so much worse. Even when he could see Reborn at all times – he'd rigged up a hammock across the room and it was directly in Tsuna's line of sight – it didn't help. There was no way he could relax even for a moment...

Reborn sighed, the hammock he'd rigged up shifting in the darkness. "If I decided to be a threat to you, you'd already be dead."

Tsuna tensed and desperately wished he still had his crowbar. "That's not really helping," he muttered, staring at the small form in the darkness.

"No, I don't suppose it is," Reborn said. "It's still true." There was a moment of silence. "Would you feel better if you had a weapon?"

"Maybe," Tsuna muttered but he kind of doubted it. A crowbar had little on guns and he'd seen Reborn's sidearm – it was the real thing too, though kind of miniaturised so that Reborn could actually use it. An actual gun would've never fit his hand, after all. "Do you know what happened to my crowbar anyway? Or Hibari's tonfa?"

"I suppose the CEDEF got rid of them," Reborn answered and was quiet for a moment. "Why do you use a crowbar anyway?"

Tsuna shifted where he lay a little. "It's a good tool," he admitted. "I used to carry an actual weapons and I did carry knives when I found them. But you can't really do much else than fight with blades or whatever. With a crowbar I could break into buildings, or out of them – get rid of stuff in my way, even dig my way through things. Better for leveraging stuff than an axe or machete or anything like that. I could use it to rig up a cooking pot, if I had nothing else. I could even use it to hoe the ground for planting stuff if I found a good spot and had some seeds."

Tsuna stopped with a little frown, a little surprised at himself. Sure, Reborn had been prodding at him to talk about hypothetical survival scenarios all day, but…

"That's interesting," Reborn answered thoughtfully and nothing else.

Tsuna buried his nose in the duvet, watching Reborn carefully. "Why haven't you asked about the future yet?" he asked then. It had been bothering him ever since the meeting in the reception room with the others. "About what happened in it? Isn't that the most important thing here?"

Reborn didn't answer immediately, shifting on the hammock a little. "It is important – but not the most important thing," he then said. "The thing that's most interesting to me isn't that you were _sent back in time_ , Tsunayoshi. It's that _you_ were sent back in time."

Tsuna frowned at that and pushed himself up to sit on his bed. "Because I'm nobody important?"

There was a small snort at that. "Funny sense of logic you have," Reborn said. "If you feel like talking about the future, I don't mind. It is important, and if there's a threat to the Vongola – and to the world – then the sooner we know, the sooner we can do something about it. But I'm here because I want to see why it was _you_ who was sent back in time."

Tsuna didn't say anything to that for a moment, peering at the darkness instead. Then, after a moment, he looked down at himself, in his small little teenage body. "It wasn't because of me," he then said. Reborn didn't answer, so he elaborated. Somehow it was easier talking here, in the darkness. "It was because of _another_ me. That's what the floating girl said. Another me did something and that's why the future was undone, and because of that…" he stopped. "She called me a gentle Sky. I didn't get it at time."

"Another you, huh," Reborn said. "So in some alternate reality there is a Sawada Tsunayoshi who can change the futures of other realities."

"I guess," Tsuna shrugged and lifted his knees up, hugging them. "I guess he stopped Byakuran in his world, or something."

"Byakuran?"

"The leader of the Millefiore. White haired guy with this leaky looking tattoo on his cheek," Tsuna explained and rested his chin on his knee. "He sent people to kill me just before the future was undone, you know. I was running away from an attack helicopter when the girl appeared. It was kind of funny now that I think about it."

Reborn didn't say anything for a while. "Funny sense of humour you've got too," he finally commented. "How long have you been alone, Tsunayoshi?"

"Dunno. Four, five winters maybe? I stopped counting after a while. It didn't really matter," Tsuna shrugged and peered at Reborn's shadow. "Hey. How old are you, really?"

Reborn sighed. "You should get some sleep, Tsunayoshi."

"… Tsuna's fine."

"Fine, _Tsuna_. Get some sleep."

 

* * *

 

Kyoko waited nervously at the corner of the road where she knew her and Tsuna's paths to school crossed. She'd been waiting there for a while, having arrived there a little sweaty and out of breath after her boxing practice. She'd foregone a shower and everything and she felt a little bit disgusting, but… she also felt pretty good.

She had no idea what the others had decided to do – she'd not seen anyone yet, it being so early and Yamamoto seemed to have skipped baseball practice too that morning. Who knew, maybe they'd decided to have nothing to do with Tsuna in the future. Well, it didn't matter because she'd made up her mind and she was sticking to it. Even if the others left, she'd decided to stick with Tsuna.

Even though she didn't know what it meant yet, she was determined. She was doing this. She'd be the Sun and she'd stick with her Sky. And she'd do it _extremely_ well. Hell yeah.

Kyoko was starting to see why her brother was always so hyped up about boxing, too. It really got the adrenaline pumping.

"Ciaossu," a familiar voice greeted her and Kyoko spun around to see Tsuna walking towards her – with Reborn sitting on top of his head. Tsuna had a long suffering look on his face while Reborn just smiled, waving a small hand at her. "Good morning Sagasawa."

"Morning Kyoko," Tsuna agreed with a sigh, rubbing at his eyes tiredly. "What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be at practice or something?"

"I was waiting for you," she said and squeezed her hands into fists. She aimed one of them at him and then paused. She had a whole speech planned – Ryohei had helped her with it – but, well. It had completely flown out of her head. "I'm doing this," she said. "This whole Flame thing. I'm doing it."

Tsuna blinked at that, looking between her fist and her face. "Are you sure?" he then asked. "It's not safe."

"Then I'll just get stronger and beat it," Kyoko said and refused to let her fist falter even a single bit.

"Um… well. Okay. If you're really sure," Tsuna said and looked at her hand again. "Um?" he said, sounding a little at lost.

"Tap your knuckles against it," Reborn instructed calmly. 

"Oh, right," Tsuna said and then made a fist and very gently patted his knuckles against hers.

It was the most awkward thing Kyoko had ever seen, it kind of looked like he expected to be punched for his efforts… but it felt great. She grinned a little at the way he frowned at his fist and then she looked up at Reborn on top of his head. "Why are you up there?" she asked curiously

"Tsuna refuses to relax," Reborn said, folding his arms. "If I walk ahead of him he keeps staring at me and if I walk beside him or behind him he keeps squirming. So I am now riding on his head. This way he knows constantly where I am without having to keep checking. Or _staring_."

"Tsuna does have a very unnerving stare," Kyoko agreed sympathetically.

"I do?" Tsuna asked with surprise.

"It's very intense," Kyoko explained.

"He uses Flames to enhance his vision," Reborn explained. "That's why it feels a bit like it burns when he looks at you."

"Wait, what?" Tsuna asked and lifted his head as if to look at Reborn – only to have the kid grab a hold of his hair to keep his balance as Tsuna's head tilted under him. "Ow," Tsuna complained and slowly looked ahead again, wincing a little. "What do you mean I use Flames to enhance my vision?" he asked then, frowning upwards but not lifting his head.

"You do. Not just your vision – you're empowering all of your senses with your Flames," Reborn explained and calmly regained his cross-legged position. "It has something to do with your inborn abilities. The Vongola bloodline is known for their Hyper Intuition, an innate awareness that can see through all. It makes your lot observant beyond normal – but you've, probably by necessity and ignorance, cranked it up to unreasonable levels. So now you're unnervingly aware of everything going on around you."

"Huh," Tsuna answered. "I didn't know my stare was unnerving," he then said, turning to Kyoko who was watching them with interest. "Sorry about that."

"It's okay, I've gotten used to it," Kyoko assured, looking between the two of them. Tsuna was a bit tense, but he wasn't as twitchy as she thought he would be in such a situation. "So, um. How's everything?"

"Well, Iemitsu packed up and left yesterday, so… better," Tsuna sighed.

They continued on, talking a bit more about the hyper intuition and Tsuna's apparent, unknowing use of Flames all the way back to the school, Kyoko and Tsuna mostly listening while Reborn explained the whole thing to Tsuna. "And speaking of Flames, Sasagawa," Reborn said.

"Kyoko is fine," she assured.

"Kyoko," he agreed. "After Tsuna, you'll be the first one I'll be looking into, now that you've agreed to join Tsuna's Family. I share your Flame affinity, so I have some techniques to teach you."

"That would be great I guess, but, um, what?" Kyoko asked. "I joined Tsuna's _what_?"

"His Family," Reborn said calmly. "That's generally what it's called, when a Sky and Guardians come together. A Family."

"Um," Tsuna said awkwardly. "That doesn't mean like… actual family, right? Because, um," he looked at Kyoko. "No offence, Kyoko, but, er. Bit too young for me?" he offered uneasily, wincing.

She blinked at him and then up at Reborn who just rolled his eyes with a slight sigh. Then Kyoko laughed. "No offence taken," she assured. She'd never thought of him that way anyway. There was something very _removed_ about him, and it had never even come to her mind. Not concerning herself anyway. "Hibari might be disappointed though."

Tsuna frowned at that. "What's that supposed to mean?"

She just giggled in answer and looked ahead. They were almost at the school now, and seeing the empty gates made her smile fall a little. "Oh," she murmured, a little disappointed. There was no one there. She couldn't even see Hana and that… that stung, a little

"Hm," Reborn hummed on top of Tsuna's head. "You'd better go in. You're going to be late."

Tsuna said nothing, and impulsively Kyoko grabbed his hand. He glanced at her with surprise and then smiled slightly, squeezing her hand gratefully. Even if no one else would stand by him, Kyoko had made her choice – she would. Even if it meant not being friends with Hana anymore – which she hoped it didn't because Hana was her best friend and she didn't want to lose that… she'd made her choice. And it would be extremely awful of her to not go through with it.

Together she and Tsuna walked through the gates.

"Sawada. You're late," Hibari growled at them, pointing a tonfa at Tsuna. "Tardiness is against the Namimori Middle School code of Conduct."

Kusakabe was standing not far behind him, idly chewing on a piece of grass. Hana was standing not far from them with Yamamoto, running her hand over her face and looking exasperated. Yamamoto was swinging a baseball bat apparently out of boredom.

Kyoko almost winced at how tightly Tsuna was holding her hand, but withheld it. Her grin she let loose though, and it was wide enough to hurt her cheeks a little. In the corner of her eye she could see Hana answering it with an awkward little smile of her own – and Yamamoto was already grinning, like he always was.

"Hibari," Tsuna said and cleared his throat awkwardly. "What's with the crowd?"

"Tch!" Hibari answered and swung around to stalk away. "Be late again and I will bite you to death."

Left behind, Kusakabe glanced after Hibari and sighed before stepping closer to Tsuna and Kyoko. "Here," he said and handed something over. A brand new crowbar. "Try not to lose this one. We'll wait for you in the reception room after school."

Kyoko grinned brightly up at him and felt her grin only widen when he nodded to her before turning around to follow Hibari. Kusakabe was so tall and kind of scary but pretty cool too, she decided, and couldn't wait to know more about him. Turning to Tsuna, she saw him testing the weight of the crowbar.

"Okay?" she asked, smiling.

"Yeah," he agreed and Hana and Yamamoto came to join them so they could head to class. Tsuna smiled quietly. "It'll do."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it for my first and probably last KHR fic. Thanks for reading :)

**Author's Note:**

> This is like one of those alternate worlds destroyed by Byakuran, one where Tsuna never tangled with the mafia? Anyway, my first KHR fic, so I'm experimenting with stuff here. Probably gonna have some weird elements. And stuff. :D


End file.
